The Difficulty of the Resurrection

Celebrating something as surreal and unexplainable as the Resurrection of Our Lord is something that can be easy and something rather difficult at the same time.  The Liturgy of the Church tries its level best to bring the truth and reality to us in many ways, through prayer, song and meditation.  There is a great communal sense of a promise and hope that rises from our hearts as we participate in the common prayer of the Church. 

Yet, the other side of truth is that there are many who do not see much signs of the promise of hope and resurrection, especially when their world is covered with darkness and suffering, despondency and sadness.  The infirm, those from broken homes, the morally bruised and battered, those who are forced to live in some situation of disintegration are just some of the examples of people who cannot for some reason or other truly enter into the joy of the resurrection, which is really the greatest good news that anyone can ever have.  It means that there is no last bastion that cannot be overcome, and that death is not the end.  But the world that many who are wrapped in cannot unbind the darkness that allows them to see this light of glory that wants to pierce this darkness. 

Perhaps the answer lies in the difficulty to truly love.  After all, if one looks at the gospel episodes of the resurrection, it was love that allowed those who saw the resurrection to truly see it as it is.  The disciples who ran to the tomb show us, I believe, a paradigm of what it means to see the resurrection.  Peter who represents the authority of the Church was given much deference to enter into the tomb first, but it was the ‘beloved disciples’ who saw through the eyes of love that saw and believed.  Even Mary Magdalene who at first mistook the Lord for a gardener (the image of a garden is one where one meets the beloved, isn’t it?) only truly opened her eyes when Our Lord spoke her name lovingly ‘Mary’.  Love does open one’s eyes to love.

When we are too enveloped in our own miry suffering and pains, it is easy to not look at many things with love.  Perhaps this is because we are only loving ourselves and in some warped way, looking only at our pain and nothing much else.  But on the Cross on Calvary, where there was pain immense, Jesus never did look upon his pain and suffering without casting his eye toward the Heavenly Father with great love.  It was not that he was not suffering, or as the heretics would accuse, ‘pretending’ to suffer.  His suffering was real, but his love for his Father’s will was much more real.  Fr Ronald Rolheiser had a deep insight in one of his blog writings where he put it so succinctly that what the resurrection teaches is that God doesn’t forcibly intervene to stop death and suffering.  Instead, he redeems the pain and vindicates death. 

Easter resurrection asks of us to have that belief in our difficulties.  Not all of us would have gone to the Easter celebrations with that great joy in our heart, with that lilt in our steps and with that delight that springs from the sunshine on our backs.  But when we choose to love, it gives us all a glimmer of hope that the resurrection is real, and that God truly loves us. 

I wish all my readers a truly blessed and joyous Resurrection this Easter.