A Reflection on Easter

Very soon, brothers and sisters, we will celebrate Easter. The Resurrection is soon to come. As a Church we will pass through Holy Week, through the Passion on Palm Sunday and Good Friday, and we will arrive at the discovery of an empty tomb, and the appearance of Jesus to the Apostles in the upper room. 

Many will undoubtedly recall from the four Gospels, taken together, that Jesus’s death left his followers stunned, shocked, confused, and even terrified. The Eleven hid in the upper room out of fear for their own lives; two of them made their way to Emmaus in the wake of Jesus’s death, fleeing, declaring to an unrecognized Risen Lord that they’d given up. 

Perhaps it’s a little ironic that Jesus’s resurrection on the Third Day would also leave them stunned, shocked, and confused. There were in the resurrection a few moments of terror; the women were at first deathly afraid of the angels announcing Jesus was Risen, and even the Twelve, as Luke relates, thought that they were seeing a ghost.

However, very soon, almost immediately, all of the shock and sorrow of death, tremb ling before angels, and fear of ghosts was soon overturned by great rejoicing. The news of the empty tomb and the reports of Jesus Risen weren’t fake news, but Good News.  Jesus was no ghost but raised up fully alive in his humanity, body and soul, and for that matter with Divinity revealed in Him. That much was made plain to the Eleven in the Upper Room as Jesus showed them His hands and His side, the nailmarks and the stab wound revealing an incredible continuity. Here was Jesus bearing the very marks that brought about the terrible finality and horror of His death, and yet those same marks revealed to their own eyes the everlasting glory of God in Jesus Christ.  

They might have been terrified at first, but that revelation of God’s glory produced absolute amazement, and the Apostles were totally overcome with joy. I hope and pray that this Easter, when we sing “Alleluia!,” that we all recognize that in that singing we’re joining in with the Apostles in their own rejoicing that day. As John Paul II once put it succinctly in a catechesis, “The joy of Christians that explodes in the song of Alleluia is founded on the fact that Jesus, the One who was cruelly scourged, who died on the cross and was buried, rose from the dead on the dawn of the third day!” Matthew 21 reveals that even Jesus himself  prophesied the rejoicing of that day by quoting Psalm 118: The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; by the Lord has this been done, and it is wonderful in our eyes’!” Jesus predicted the wonder and joy that sprang up in the Apostles when they truly perceived that He was the Risen Lord, and that joy that’s been present in Christians, including us, ever since. 

We rejoice because the Resurrection of Jesus is the greatest event in human history. As Paul said in Romans 5, “In Adam, all have sinned,” and that fact left us as a species coping with misery and evil. Even an unbeliever has to admit that human beings have been dealing with suffering and death from time immemorial, that no one has ever been able to fashion a remedy, and with all of the bitterness and anger and even outright war several places, it does not look as if humanity is going to create one any time soon. 

Jesus Risen, however, means God has brought about that remedy. The Resurrection launched a new era in human history, where strife and death are overcome, revealed in Jesus’ own body, summed up in His words in the upper room: “Peace be with you!” As Paul would later say in Romans,  we have peace with God through Jesus Christ. Jesus’s death reconciled us with God, and left us with the task of living in that Resurrection life received at Baptism, and living it together with one another united in love as a preparation for eternity. Indeed, John Paul II once said that Easter is a day without end. Jesus’s victory over death opened up eternity to us, an eternity in Jesus, as the Lamb of God continues to offer himself to God the Father on our behalf. It’s an offering that brings us in God’s love to heaven itself in peace, in reconciliation, and for all time.  

Since everyone reading this is probably doing so because of a connection to St. Benedict’s Abbey, it’s worth mentioning something from the monastic tradition. That new life to be had in Christ is the reason for our existence. There’s the possibility in all of this of obtaining new, eternal life in love, right here on earth, and even obtaining God himself who did it all. For a monk, it’s the only lasting thing worth pursuing in the end, and we do it so that all of you who support and love us can have love and peace in eternity, too. Know this Easter season, as you sing Alleluia yourselves, that we monks pray for you, call blessing down on you, and wish that the joy of Easter that so filled the hearts of the first Christians on that third day, fills your own hearts, too.

 *Easter Through the Octave

Author: Pope John Paul II

In his General Audience on Wednesday, 6 April 1988, the Holy Father reflected on Easter Day as the day that has no end. https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/easter-through-the-octave-23927