St. Paul wrote to the Colossians (3:1): “If then you were
raised with Christ, seek what is above….”
In other words, live in the light of Easter. Live with the hope and joy of Easter. You have been baptized and given a new
life. Live with the hope and joy that
this new life in Christ brings.
Our temptation is to live in darkness and despair. There is so much “Good Friday” in the world
today. So many tragic deaths. So much
abandonment on crosses made, in Pope Francis’ words, by “the globalization of
indifference.”
In his Apostolic Exhortation “The Joy of the Gospel,” Pope
Francis wrote about the serious temptation to “defeatism which turns us into
disillusioned pessimists, ‘sourpusses’ (#85).
People who give in to this temptation “think that nothing will change”
(#275). But because of Christ’s
resurrection, we have hope.
Pope Francis writes: “If we think that things are not going
to change, we need to recall that Jesus Christ has triumphed over sin and death
and is now almighty. Jesus Christ truly lives” (#275). This means that “Christ’s resurrection is not
an event of the past; it contains a vital power which has permeated this world”
(#276). Because of the resurrection, we
have hope and confidence.
But holding fast to hope requires work. We have to strengthen the hope that Christ’s
resurrection gives, to believe that it “is not an event of the past,” but a
force at work in our lives and in the world.
“Faith means believing in God, believing that he truly loves us, that he
is alive, that he is mysteriously capable of intervening, that he does not abandon
us and that he brings good out of evil by his power and his infinite creativity”
(#278).
That is where our faith is challenged: to believe that evil
is not the final word and that God can bring “good out of evil.” Yet this is what we have just
celebrated. God took the worst evil
possible—the crucifixion of the Son—and brought out of it the greatest good—our
salvation from sin and death. This is
the reason for our hope and joy.
Timothy Cardinal Dolan of New York has identified four
threats to joy.
The first is self-pity which puts “me” first, at the
center. Joy comes when God is first,
others are second, and I am third.
Self-pity inverts that order and leads to unhappiness.
Secondly, joy is threatened by worry which fosters a
negative attitude toward the future, feeds pessimism, and again places “me” at
the center.
The third threat to joy is the belief that my happiness
depends on something outside of myself.
I believe that certain things or people or situations will make me happy
whereas, in the words of Jesuit Fr. John Powell’s book, “Happiness is an Inside
Job.” But what about God? Shouldn’t God be the source of my joy and isn’t
God transcendent? Yes, but through
baptism God is also within. As baptized temples
of the Holy Spirit, we find God within the secret chamber of our heart.
Finally, the fourth threat to joy, according to Cardinal
Dolan, is complaining which not only saps our joy but spreads negativity to
others who often in turn reinforce our own negative attitude. The antidote?
Gratitude. Seeing the glass as
half full rather than half empty and being grateful for what fills the
glass.
In our case, we are filled with the light, hope, and joy of
Christ’s resurrection. Having spent
forty days of Lenten preparation for the celebration of the Easter Triduum, we
now have fifty days in which to savor its hope and joy.
But we must do more than savor the hope and joy of
Easter. We must live it in our daily
lives. We were made new through
baptismal waters. The world was made new
by Christ’s resurrection. As Pope
Francis wrote in “The Joy of the Gospel”: “Christ’s resurrection everywhere
calls forth seeds of that new world; even if they are cut back, they grow
again, for the resurrection is already secretly woven into the fabric of this
history, for Jesus did not rise in vain.
May we never remain on the sidelines of this march of living hope!”
(#278).
Our lives are a journey to the Kingdom of Heaven where we
will live forever. We will live body and
soul sharing in the glory of Jesus Christ, our Risen Savior. May we not, as Pope Francis said, “remain on
the sidelines,” but may we march forward with hope and joy.
