To celebrate Easter well, we must know of our need for redemption. This knowledge is not speculative or conceptual. It is something we are aware of like a toothache, a hangover, or the sadness of mourning a loved one who has died. It is a fact that is felt deep within and affects us, shading everything.
Easter is not for the self-sufficient or the proud. To rise from the grave with Christ we must experience the yawning tomb within our own hearts, a desert place with no water, raging with passion during the burning day and isolated and afraid in the frigid, dark night. Without an acknowledgment of sin –– not faults or personality defects, but real sin, that stubborn thing of saying no to God and neighbor –– Easter is reduced to an egg hunt and a ham brunch at Grandma’s. I love ham as much as the next guy, but it is hardly worth 50 days of alleluias.
But let’s face it –– the resurrection of Christ doesn’t seem to have mattered much in world affairs. What I mean by this is that we are still killing each other 2,000 years after the appearance of the Risen One to the Apostles. Centuries after Jesus rose from the dead, parents still bury their children and the powerful still bully the weak. So … remind me –– what exactly have we been saved from?
Ourselves.
You see, you are not loved because you are lovable. You’re not saved because of your works of goodness or kindness. You are not a cherished daughter or son of God because you’ve got it all figured out. Rather, you are loved because he is love. And after enduring the absolute worst that humanity has to offer –– betrayal, false accusation, abandonment, denial, humiliation, even deicide –– Christ still comes back. Like the crazed hound of heaven, undaunted by any obstacle we use to seal ourselves within ourselves, he pursues the brokenhearted through the gates of death itself. “Peace be with you. Forgive one another as I have forgiven you.” His sacred wounds, probed by Thomas, our twin, are an eternal Gospel, born forever even in heaven. I know who you are, Christ proclaims through his wounds. I bear the marks of your weakness in my body and I love you still, he says.
But again, this proclamation will mean little if we don’t think we need mercy. Christ has come to save sinners, not the righteous. If we are convinced of our own goodness there will be little time for, or insight into, the real power of Easter. If we don’t need a messiah, we don’t need Jesus. Simple as that. And those alleluias will exhaust us.
Easter is not about vague new beginnings. It is a commemoration of a historical fact –– Love made flesh was put to death by human sin and rose again in mercy. And receiving that mercy — deep within, like rain from heaven upon a dry, weary land — we are called to love as we have been loved. To forgive. The command to forgive sins is not only given to the apostolic band. It is given to us. “Do this in memory of me.” Remember what I have done for you –– and then forgive and love, even unto death.
Easter is a graced time to remember the wonders of the Lord –– the wonders of mercy, which are known only by those who know they need mercy. The prostitute and the tax collector, the addict and the traitor are included in that number, as are all those who have finally surrendered the idea that they can save themselves and whose illusions have been washed away as in a flood. It is here, in the depths of the abyss of self-knowledge, that the Light of the World shines brightest. And saves.
Lumen Christi! Thanks be to God!
Father Erickson is parochial vicar of Nativity of Our Lord in St. Paul and interim chairman of the Archdiocesan Liturgical Commission.
