Does Easter Ask Too Much of Us…….?

The Easter Season will conclude in about 11 days (depending on whether or not you count today – what should be Ascension Thursday in all parts of the Christian world and not just a few, but that is a story for another day!). It has been a compelling Easter, there is no doubt about that. What with a pandemic and the restrictions on participation in any of the sacraments, let alone stay-at-home orders, and predictions and warnings that run the gamut from instant cures and vaccines to death tolls in the millions. If it is not enough to make us forget that it is still Easter, it’s enough to make us think that Easter is some cruel joke. How can we talk about life after death, when there only seems to be death and sorrow and despair……everywhere?

And yet, it is still Easter. As difficult as it might seem to remember and to continue to embrace that truth and that reality. And even with the coming of Pentecost, Easter does not end as if we can place it up on a shelf to forgot about it until next March or April. It is always Easter, because if Christ has not risen, then, as St. Paul cautions, our faith and everything we have or whatever destiny we might want for ourselves is all in vain.

Is this too much to believe in? Yes, probably for most if not all of us. But it still does not negate the truth that Easter is and what Easter means for us. Proclaiming new life and new hope against the background of anxiety and despair is not easy, and yet this is where the core of our witness belongs. Aidan Kavanaugh, the late Benedictine liturgical theologian, said it best when he described the Resurrection as THE event that jerked the world onto new courses it would have been incapable of achieving on its own. He goes on to remind us, though, that these are courses that death, darkness, and sin do not like and will do their best to make us believe that nothing has changed, nothing has been transformed because Christ is risen.

Does Easter ask too much of us? Definitely! Because it is a dare, simple as that. A dare to believe and trust that God knows what God is doing in all times and places. Our challenge is take God up on this dare; never to give up or give in to the easier course of despair and doubt. We are called, as we always are, to confront darkness, death, and sin and proclaim to their face, even with a shaky confidence, that the God whom we say we believe in is always and everywhere bringing life from all that stands against us. The question that now stands before us is, will we venture to do so?

Fr. Jim Sabak, OFM, Ph.D.

Chair of the American Franciscan Liturgical Commission