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
