The Promise of Christ to Be with Us Always

Dear Friends,

These are bleak times. Think Ukraine, economic instability, COVID-19 and its variations, mental stress for everyone, including children and youth. All of these and more absorb and distract us from being attentive to God as Passiontide ends and Easter dawns.

Given all of this, is there any cause for Easter Joy? Absolutely! But let’s remember that Easter joy is not a giddy, silly celebration of peeps, chocolate bunnies, jellybeans, and Easter egg hunts.

Easter is a deep-down realization that Jesus lives.

In John’s account of the empty tomb, Simon Peter found “the burial cloths there, and the cloth that had covered his head rolled up in a separate place” (John 6 - 7). Simon Peter knew what the separated, folded headcloth meant. In Jewish households, if the master of the house was called away from dinner, he left a signal for his servants. A crumpled napkin meant “Don’t wait for me. I won’t be back to the table.” A folded napkin meant “I will return.” 

Jesus’ folded headcloth meant he would be back. He was back, and He is here today, accompanying us through bleak times. He doesn’t spare us from the miseries that beset us. That would deny our freedom to be human, but He walks with us.

We know this because we feel the pull of Easter, we feel Easter hope stirring in us.

At the U.S. southern border, in Ukraine, and everywhere people suffer, religious groups, humanitarian groups, individuals of conviction, all bolster everyone they can. Each helpmate and peace-seeker are an Easter sign that the Risen Christ is among us.

In our families, among our friends burdened by illness or distress are generous women and men who help. They, too, are Easter signs that the Risen Christ is among us.

Pope Francis reminds us of what we already know: “Easter is a time when God turns the inevitability of death into the invincibility of life” (March 9, 2022). Ultimately, death has no victory, no sting.

Today we can believe this, because it is true:

The premise of bleak times has given way to

the promise of Christ to be with us always.

~Sister Joan Sobala