Happy Easter : The End of Holy Week, the Beginning of Christianity

HE IS RISEN. That is the most important news we human beings hear today and every day. • The Gospel for Easter Sunday is Luke 24:1-12 -- "But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices which they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel; and as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, 'Why do you seek the living among the dead? Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and on the third day rise.' And they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Mag'dalene and Jo-an'na and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told this to the apostles; but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home wondering at what had happened." • • • JESUS : RISEN FROM THE GRAVE. The Jesuit priest James V. Schall, S.J. (1928-2019) served as a professor at Georgetown University for thirty-five years and was one of the most prolific Catholic writers in America. Among his many books are The Mind That Is Catholic; The Modern Age; Political Philosophy and Revelation : A Catholic Reading; Reasonable Pleasures; Docilitas : On Teaching and Being Taught; Catholicism and Intelligence; and, most recently, On Islam: A Chronological Record, 2002-2018. Father Schall died Wednesday at the age of 91. His family stated that, “he was comfortable and at peace” at the time of his death. • Catholic News Agency (CNA) published on Easter Sunday one of Father Schall's essays from his “Journey through Lent,” (The Catholic Truth Society). In the essay Father Schall wrote : "Alexander Solzhenitsyn told a skeptical Harvard Graduating Class in 1978 : 'If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot be unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life....It has to be the fulfilment of a permanent, earnest duty, so that one’s life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being.' " • Father Schall says : "We shall not pass away into everlasting nothingness. And we shall be ourselves, not gods, but members each, as Augustine said, of The City of God. The only unbelievable element in Christianity, then, is what makes it believable, that is, its Resurrection, its Easter, with its promises. This faith is very hard on abstractions, very hard indeed....The astronomer Professor Robert Jastrow wrote recently : 'Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world (the word the Bible used to describe the universe). The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy. (from 'Have astronomers Found God?' The New York Times Magazine, 25 June 1978, p. 19.)....If stories about our beginnings are not so far-fetched after all, perhaps stories about our end need not be so improbable either. Easter Sunday is a festivity, a celebration. Its only interest and value to us is if it is what it implies, the Resurrection of Jesus, the pledge of ours. We know that we shall be different. We also believe that we shall be quite literally ourselves, with our own name, as Jesus was not some new or Third Man, but himself, Jesus. Any other belief would be despair. And on Easter Day, Christianity is not a religion of despair." • On Easter Sunday, American Thinker's Trevor Thomas put it a bit differently in his article titled "Understanding Jesus's Mission." Trevor Thomas writes : "One of the most important questions in the history of the universe is 'Why did Jesus have to die?' This is especially the case as we are in the throes of what many are referring to as the 'post-truth' era, where 'Everybody Wants to Rule Their World.' The late great Oswald Chambers [an early twentieth-century Scottish Baptist and Holiness Movement evangelist and teacher, best known for the devotional My Utmost for His Highest, a daily devotional that compiles his Christian preaching to students and soldiers. The title is taken from one of Chambers' sermons : "Shut out every consideration and keep yourself before God for this one thing only -- "My Utmost for His Highest." My Utmost for His Highest has sold more than 13 million copies worldwide since 1927. It remains one of the most popular Christian devotionals even today.] provides one of the best descriptions of why Jesus went to the cross : 'The Cross of Christ is the revealed truth of God’s judgment on sin....There is nothing in time or eternity more absolutely certain and irrefutable than what Jesus Christ accomplished on the Cross -- He made it possible for the entire human race to be brought back into a right-standing relationship with God. He made redemption the foundation of human life; that is, He made a way for every person to have fellowship with God.' " • Trevor Thomas explains the mission of Jesus : "The Cross was not something that happened to Jesus -- He came to die; the Cross was His purpose in coming. He is 'the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world' (Revelation 13:8). The incarnation of Christ would have no meaning without the Cross. Beware of separating 'God was manifested in the flesh...' from '...He made Him...to be sin for us...' (1 Timothy 3:16 ; 2 Corinthians 5:21). The purpose of the incarnation was redemption. One of my favorite scriptures that explains the death of Jesus is near the end of the first chapter of the book of Colossians. Colossians 1:19-20 reads : 'For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him [Jesus], and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.' In other words, Jesus was, in the words of CS Lewis, 'The Perfect Penitent.' As Lewis puts it, 'We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity. That is what has to be believed.'....Just as important as Christ dying for our sins is His resurrection. The physical resurrection of Jesus is the cornerstone of Christianity. As Lewis put it, 'to preach Christianity meant primarily to preach the Resurrection.'....for a complete understanding of the events of Jesus’ life -- especially His death and resurrection -- one must seek to understand sin and its sorrowful, destructive, and deadly effect upon humanity. Unless you have a proper understanding of sin -- especially the sin in your own life -- you don’t really understand why Jesus came into this world, why He said the things He said, why He did the things He did, and why He died and was raised to life again.' The first act of Jesus’ public ministry was His baptism by John. As Jesus came to the Jordan River, John declared (John 1:29), 'Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!' Since the first humans decided that they wanted to 'be like God,' the world has been plagued -- literally cursed -- by sin. In the healing of the paralyzed man at Capernaum (recorded in Matthew, Mark, and Luke), Jesus reveals the 'sickness' from which human beings are in most need of a cure. After his friends went through the difficult work of getting their paralyzed friend to the roof of a crowded house where Jesus was teaching, and after they labored to lower their friend into the room so that he could get closer to Jesus, what were the first words out of Jesus’ mouth? As the Book of Mark records, Jesus, seeing the faith of the paralyzed man and his friends, immediately declared to the man, 'Son, your sins are forgiven.' If you’re an adult and you haven’t suffered, you’ve probably at least witnessed a loved one go through a difficult time with his or her health. Imagine your loved one struggling with an injury or illness and when he visits a physician he believes can heal him, the first thing he is told is that his sins are forgiven. Unless one understands that his or her greatest need is spiritual, such a statement would probably fall very flat. Jesus spent His entire life on earth trying to get people to see what they really needed -- forgiveness. More so than any other human who has walked this planet, Jesus knew -- and knows -- what we need most. He understood perfectly the sin-sickness of humanity and that He alone had -- and still has -- the cure." • Trevor Thomas says : "People don’t like hearing that things in their life need to change; that they are on the wrong path; that the things they are currently enjoying are really quite evil and deadly....In other words, people don’t like being told that they need to 'repent.' One of the greatest lies ever told is that your (and my) sin is not really sin. One of the greatest debates within the church today surrounds the question of what is sin. If we can’t answer that question well and accurately, then we will fall short of understanding and appreciating all that Jesus did for us....Jesus came for no other reason than to redeem us, to save us. Save us from what? From the sin that leads to death, hell, and eternal separation from God. We don’t get to come to God and accept Jesus on our own terms. It must be unconditional surrender. We must be willing to lay down everything that is an affront to God. He created us, He sustains us, and He alone can save us. Instead of recognizing Jesus as savior, many seem to come to Him thinking He is a divine Santa Claus, there merely to give them what they want if they only go through the proper channels. Others seem to see Jesus as some sort of cosmic yes-man, there to make them feel good about any and every decision they choose to make. Still others -- believers and nonbelievers alike -- see Jesus simply as a powerful do-gooder, one that we are to emulate....Jesus healed, fed, and cast out demons because of His great love for those in need, [but] such good deeds were not the final objective for His earthly ministry. In other words, these acts alone did not save anyone. Those healed of one disease or sickness would someday die of another. Those fed would someday be hungry again. Christ’s ultimate goal was to bring people into His Kingdom. The ministry of God -- feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, healing the sick -- should never be separated from the message of God -- to repent of our sin and believe that Jesus was who He claimed to be: the Son of God and the Savior of the world. The ministry of God and the message of God -- both together complete the mission of God. In other words, God became man not simply to improve us, or to help us out of a jam, or to give us what we ask for, or to make us feel better, but to make us into new creatures. Happy Resurrection Day!" • • • ST PAUL SAYS THIS ABOUT REDEMPTION. If we go to 1 Colossians, it pays to read a longer part of Paul's message to the new Christian community. The message is in 1:9-23 -- "For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way : bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created : things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation -- if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant." • • • DEAR READERS, as we celebrate the Resurrection on Easter Day -- it's always interesting to me that instead of saying 'Happy Easter,' the French often pointedly say 'Happy Day of Easter' -- there is a certain sadness in the air. As if the fire and destruction of the Cathedral Notre Dame de Paris weren't enough, this morning we learned that terrorists have bombed three churches in Sri Lanka as Christians celebrated Easter. Three tourist hotels were also bombed. The death count so far is 207, with 450 wounded. We pray for the dead, for their families, and for Sri Lanka. Tomorrow we will follow this horrible story in more detail. • BUT, to finish our Easter blog, I would like to share an article from The Catholic Thing written by the Reverend Jerry J. Pokorsky. Its title is "Who is the woman caught in adultery? Father Pokorsky wrote the piece during Lent, on April 7. In it, he says : "In the Gospel of John, malicious scribes and Pharisees bring to Jesus an unnamed woman caught in adultery. They intend to put Jesus to the test. As a man of mercy, would He set Himself against the Mosaic Law? Jesus remains silent, scribbles in the dirt (reminiscent of Jeremiah’s scribbling the sins of the Israelites and the finger of the Lord inscribing the stone tablet with His Ten Commandments). Then Jesus challenges them : 'Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.' (John 8:7) The men disperse in shame, including in all likelihood her cruel partner in crime. After their departure, Jesus asks, 'Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?' " • That is a stark reminder of the human condition -- one of sin that casts its blot on everything we do or say or think. A blot that only Our Lord can remove, as he did for the Magdalene, thought by scholars to be the Mary who was the sister of Martha, the sisters who often welcomed and fed Jesus and his disciples. Most Christians learn early the story of the two sister, whose brother was Lazarus whom Jesus raised from the dead. Martha was the busy one, cooking and cleaning. Mary was content to sit by Jesus, and it was Mary who became his steadfast disciple. Father Pokorsky continues : "Although Jesus also does not condemn her, neither does He absolve her of the sin. His parting words are, 'Go, and sin no more.' (John 8:11) Mary, identified as 'Mary Magdalene,' who joined (and learned from) the mother of Jesus at the foot of the Cross : 'But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.' (John 19:25 RSV) And Mary Magdalene was the first of the disciples to encounter the risen Christ. Even her weeping is in character with her first appearance as the then-anonymous repentant sinner at the feet of Jesus. After Mary Magdalene leads Peter and the Apostles to the empty tomb on Easter Sunday, the Apostles depart for their homes. Mary stays behind, persevering in her grief, leading to one of the most beautiful and tender scenes in the Gospels : "Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb....she turned round and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, 'Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?' Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, 'Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.' Jesus said to her, 'Mary.' She turned and said to him in Hebrew, 'Rabo’ni!' (which means Teacher). (John 20:11-16 RSV). It is indeed reasonable to hold that Mary Magdalene accompanied Jesus for most of His public life, from the depths of her sin and despair, to the heights of sanctity and joy. Her example demonstrates the horror of slavery to sin, the beauty and tenderness that comes with repentance, the cost of discipleship, and the reward of perseverance in faith and love. And she provides hope for sinners tempted to despair." • I cannot begin to imagine the beauty in the sound of His voice as He spoke Mary's name. But, every time I read that passage, a spark of joy and recognition runs through me. As we celebrate Easter, may each of us seek the voice of Our Lord. May we hear Him call our name. Nothing else matters in life.