“I have risen, and I am with you still, alleluia. … Too wonderful for me, this knowledge, alleluia, alleluia.” (Easter entrance antiphon).
The Holy Week and Easter ceremonies help us to remember. In the Passover meal Jesus celebrated the memory of Israel’s delivery. During Holy Week we were invited to remember Jesus’ passion for humanity and for all creation. At Easter we now celebrate his victory over death. “When you do this, remember me.”
At Easter the tragedy and deep despair of the disciples are transformed in their encounters with Jesus; they see Jesus differently and they understand their own lives in a new way. They remember events and words that previously they did not understand. So too our messy personal stories and tragedies can be touched by Easter. As the encounters with the risen Jesus bring hope and confirm the faith of his friends, making them alive as never before, so our encounters with him can transform our memories. The disciples saw him die yet now experience him as alive, as a presence that changes everything. He is a life giver, as St Paul says. He does not take away death, but letting a part of us die with Jesus opens a pathway to a transformed life.
Jesus came into the world with nothing; he left the world with nothing, passing beyond this world to the Father, the firstborn from the dead. The Easter Jesus is a poor Jesus. Yet he acts richly in our lives. He gives us dignity. The Risen Lord enriched his disciples in a special way with the mission he gave them, with the Spirit that accompanies his mission, by his promise to be present to every human person. The impact of the resurrection is found in the powerful transformation evident in the lives and behaviour of the disciples missioned by the Risen Jesus “to the ends of the earth”. The apostles had neither “silver nor gold”, yet they were empowered by the Holy Spirit and by faith in the name of Jesus. The apostles, and we too, are made rich by his love and inspired by the power of his mission.
Still strongly present to many of us is the witness of our brother Jesuit, Fr Frans van der Lugt, a gentle soul who before he was brutally murdered in his home in Homs, Syria, had said to a friend, “How can I leave my people?” We know his name. We know about him. As we mourn Fr Frans, we mourn too the 150,000 who have died and the millions left homeless in this senseless conflict, whose names are not known to us.
Because of Easter, our memories and our tragedies are transformed with new understanding. If we can be open to this, we are turned from paths and memories that deal in death to the Way that leads to life.
May your Easter experiences be truly joyful and may the Risen Lord bless you abundantly this Eastertide.
Fr Mark Raper SJ
President