Happy Easter!
I trust your Lent was deeply spiritual. Perhaps you were able to join us in the Exodus Bible Study or the Marriage Course or the most recent Alpha series or maybe you did some spiritual reading or engaged in more prayer or maybe you took on some works of mercy to help those who are in need. Whatever you chose to do, I pray that it helped you to see things anew.
Several of the Lenten gospels invited us to truly look and see – Jesus on the cross. The liturgies did that again this past week starting with the Passion gospel on Palm Sunday and then walking with Jesus through Holy Week. We may be tempted at times to look away from the crucifix, to look away from what Jesus is inviting you and me to experience. Or we may be tempted to see the cross as God’s attempt to resolve a problem peculiar to being God. The liturgies reminded us that we are to look on the cross of Christ and to see there the goodness of our God. Jesus has taken unto himself our love of the darkness so that we might live the light of his cross.
One of my college classmates had made a poster which showed the face of a large male lion. The words on it said, “Christianity was never a spectator sport. It still isn’t.” Lent should have reminded us of that, the crucifixion is not a spectator event.
We may have a hard time hearing Jesus say that those who wish to follow him are to “pick up their cross” they are to “deny themselves” they are to “die”. To really look means more than merely gazing but to see that we have been ruled by the power of sin and we have chosen to die to our fascination with sin. By grace we have been made alive again with Christ. We have been raised with Jesus and are invited to share in his heavenly glory. Just as Jesus was raised up on the cross to be a light for the world, so you and I are meant to be a light, a witness, of God’s love for the world. The world needs to see an alternative to being held captive by death. They need to see people who are unafraid of death, people who are unafraid to love.
If we wish to celebrate the real depth of Easter joy and share in Jesus’ resurrection, then we must join him on the cross. To be raised with Christ means the end of any attempt to passively stare at the crucifixion. You cannot stare at that in which you participate. We are invited not simply to look at the cross and live but to eat this bread and drink this wine which becomes for us Christ’s body and blood. In this meal we are transformed by what we consume and therefore participate in God’s salvation of the world.
Over the next few weeks we will hear the stories of disciples who encountered Jesus after he rose from the dead. The Easter season is longer than Lent. It lasts fifty days and will end on Pentecost when we celebrate the Holy Spirit transforming the disciples from observers to participants in the Kingdom of God. We will also listen to stories from the Acts of Apostles as simple fishermen take on the task of changing the entire world by becoming the very presence of Jesus.
May the Easter season continue to help us to see who Jesus has called us to be – so much more than spectators. The world needs you.
Peace,
Fr. Damian