Easter Sunday 2007

Wherever two or three are gathered in his name, the odds are likely that someone is complaining about the scandals, or vocation shortages, or the ignorance of youth, or the folly of our leaders, or some other symptom of our faithless age.

This kind of glass-half-empty approach to our Catholic lives seems oddly consoling to those who choose to linger on such symptoms, the implication being that they are the worthy remnant.

The irony is that when Christians bemoan the horrors of their age, they too often provide a singularly unappealing face of Catholicism: pinched and worried, more eager to talk about the sins of others than the salvation won for them.

This is the church without Easter. This vanity is a heart unchanged by the great sacrifice of Good Friday and the redemption confirmed for us on Easter Sunday. This is a heart untouched by the joy of salvation, untransformed by the sacrificial love of the sinless lamb who died for our sins.

What is lacking in so much of our Christian witness today is joy. And we lack this joy if we have not allowed ourselves to be truly transformed by our redeemer God.

Think of one of the most powerful witnesses of the faith in our era.

Think of Mother Teresa. What characterized her was not a message of condemnation. She did not waste time recounting all the ways that people were failing. Instead, she who was transformed by an intimate encounter with Christ ministered to the most lowly and despised of humanity with joy. She attracted people of every faith, or no faith at all, because she radiated God's love for them.

People saw the Easter promise in her.

In Calcutta, among the dying, her luminous joy attracted others to her, for she was a living witness of the power of Christ to transform us.

Other saints were similarly transformed. They accepted hardship, they accepted even martyrdom with this same sense of joy. Do we embrace our lives, our crosses, our challenges with similar joy? Do we radiate a trust in God that others can see? In our most difficult moments, are we an Easter people?

After the risen Lord encountered the apostles in Jerusalem and asked them why they were troubled, he showed them his hands and his feet. He affirmed to reality of his resurrection, and they became "incredulous for joy and were amazed" (Lk 24:41).

Joy is a hallmark of our encounter with the risen Christ, for we who were lost have been found.

Our age is not so different from every other age. The sins are not new. The shortcomings are not original. The suffering is no more painful than in other eras.

And our responsibility as Catholics is no different either. We are to care for the weak, bring aid to the sick, visit the prisoners, comfort the dying. We are to bring solace to the despairing, friendship to the lonely, hope to the hopeless. And we are to do all of this with joy.

This Easter, let us kneel before our risen Lord and ask him to transform our hearts, so that all who see us, see him in us. Let us joyfully celebrate Christ's final victory over death, and let us share this joy with our world.

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