From pastor’s desk on Easter Sunday 2022
Christ is Risen! Alleluia!
The world again is ravaged by injustice, violence, financial crisis, and many other terrible atrocities such as the war in Ukraine. Every day news can fill us with anxiety and fear about our future. While facing this difficult and incomprehensible reality we are all looking for something or someone that gives us hope and a better understanding of the state of affairs. We often get frustrated and even angry when no one can give us a straight answer to all our inquiries. However, as Catholic Christians we know the answer – it is Jesus Christ. For “There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved” (Act 4:12).
Recently I came across a very neat comparison regarding Jesus and His mission towards the world, which I would like to use here, for it may help us to understand how much we need Jesus.
“Science says that we need at least four basic elements to survive:
water, air, food, and light.
And look what the Bible tells us about Jesus:
I am the Living Water.
I am [the Breath of] Life.
I am the Bread of Life.
I am the Light of the World.”
We all must realize that ultimately, there is no other remedy to the world’s problems apart from Christ. Hence, the world needs to hear about Jesus and His Resurrection. The world needs to hear about the newness of life in Jesus and that death is not the last word. The last word belongs to Christ, for He is our Way, our Truth, and our Life.
Let us not forget that Jesus the Son of God came to this world mainly for one reason: to save the world from eternal damnation. He achieved that by His death on the cross. But the Cross is not the last thing to happen, it is only the means to salvation – the last word belongs to Christ and it is expressed in His Resurrection. If we truly believe in Jesus, Easter should fill us with hope beyond this world. Through faith in the Resurrection we know that all our strife eventually will end, if we only unite our crosses to Jesus’. We also know for sure that our suffering finds its meaning in God alone.
As someone simply said, “What the world needs is a little wonder.” We see this wonder in the Christ, Crucified and Risen. This is the great wonder that the world needs to discover anew. It is the beauty of Christ Resurrected, which is beyond the grasp of the human mind, for it is the beauty of God’s love for humanity. It is His love that shines on the Cross and leads us to the glory of the Resurrection. It is His love that can change the human world from within.
One of the most relevant comments I found was written and delivered by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI as he said regarding the Resurrection of Jesus:
“But somehow the Resurrection is situated so far beyond our horizon, so far outside all our experience that, returning to ourselves, we find ourselves continuing the argument of the disciples: Of what exactly does this "rising" consist? What does it mean for us, for the whole world and the whole of history? A German theologian once said ironically that the miracle of a corpse returning to life - if it really happened, which he did not actually believe - would be ultimately irrelevant precisely because it would not concern us. In fact, if it were simply that somebody was once brought back to life, and no more than that, in what way should this concern us? But the point is that Christ’s Resurrection is something more, something different. If we may borrow the language of the theory of evolution, it is the greatest "mutation", absolutely the most crucial leap into a totally new dimension that there has ever been in the long history of life and its development: a leap into a completely new order which does concern us, and concerns the whole of history.” (Benedict XVI, Easter Vigil Homily 2006)
I wish you all that this Easter may fill you with authentic hope and joy. May you encounter the Living Christ in His Church, and especially in the Eucharist. HAPPY EASTER!
Fr. Janusz Mocarski, pastor