WE ARE AN EASTER PEOPLE

 

Know your deficits!

Deficits are simply what is lacking in our life. In this time of high inflation, many people experience a strong deficit in money. They are finding it more difficult to try to cover all the bills by the end of the month. We know what a deficit is.

 

Our Christian churches suffer from a strong ‘Easter’ deficit. We have been nourished and supported by a spirituality of the suffering and death of Jesus. For too many of the ordinary faithful the resurrection of Jesus is just an add-on, which does not demand too much of believers. This is the result of an almost exclusive focus on the death/ cross of Jesus. It was a spirituality that was not focused on the death-resurrection theology of St. Paul in the New Testament. But it is a spirituality that is very incomplete.

 

After a century of hard-nosed Scripture studies and a firm understanding of what the spiritual life was like in the first centuries of Christianity, we conclude that we must always focus on the death-resurrection as the one event of our redemption. Both events are like the two sides of our hand. You can never have half a hand.

 

We must not lessen our emphasis on the death/cross of Jesus but we must continue with the great moment of revelation by God the Father/Holy Spirit who exploded the resurrection of Jesus. The grace of God triumphed over the power of sin and death. The resurrection is the giving of God to us (human recipients) of the very life and person of the Son of God. 

 

Now, the resurrection is not an event by itself. The resurrection of Jesus is God sharing the divine life and redemption with the disciples. The resurrection is always a ‘now’ event in that each believer must come to share the life of the resurrected Jesus. Each believer must become the living continuation of Jesus Christ. 

 

Western Christianity must rebuild the central importance of Easter.  As a Church we must educate ourselves in the meaning and revelation of the salvific event of Easter. We must also be shown what are the consequences of the resurrection in the here and now. How are we to live as Easter people in today’s world?

 

It may take a century to recover the central importance of Easter but the place to begin is the manner in which our parishes celebrate the three days of Easter (beginning on the evening of Holy Thursday and finishing with vespers on Easter Sunday). The challenge is right in front of us. How do we educate ourselves in the meaning and purpose of the death/resurrection of Jesus?