Friends
Peace be with you.
What do bunnies, chocolate, or eggs have to do with the resurrection of Jesus? It’s all wrapped up in the Easter celebration, right, but what is the connection between them? Several comedians have very joyously pointed out that there is none. We’ve really rammed together two celebrations that share the same time frame. One celebration is about spring and the new life that is associated with this time of year. Birds' eggs hatch in the spring and give us baby birds. Rabbits have bunnies in the spring. Chocolate is the international symbol of love and romance for couples. Love is in the air and, while I know Jesus’ death and resurrection are very much actions that show the Father’s love, Easter celebrates something more profound than fertility.
In the first reading, Peter is speaking to his fellow Jews who were in the crowd on Good Friday shouting “crucify him” and freeing Barabbas. He has every right to be hurt, angry, and upset at his religious brothers and sisters who were instrumental in crucifying the Lord. Yet, he excuses them, saying they acted out of ignorance, and invites them to “Repent, therefore, and be converted that your sins may be wiped away.” Similarly, in the second reading from St. John’s first letter, the Beloved Disciple says that he is writing to his followers so that they will not sin. But, if they do sin, Jesus is sending another Advocate, the Holy Spirit, who is the expiation for our sins and the sins of the whole world. What allows these two apostles to be able to preach about forgiveness of sins?
Undoubtedly, it was because they had experiences like the one recounted in the Gospel. After Jesus’s appearance to the two disciples on the Road to Emmaus, they ran back to Jerusalem to tell the twelve apostles all that had happened. Then Jesus appears to them. After he shows that he’s not merely a ghost, he tells them that repentance and forgiveness of sins would be preached in his name. Then, he calls them witnesses to this.
During lent, we emphasize the importance of repentance and forgiveness of sins. We encourage people to go to confession and we make extra time for it. There are some priests who get annoyed by last Sunday’s celebration, Divine Mercy Sunday, because of its emphasis on going to confession. They ask how much sinning someone can do in the two or three weeks since we had all that extra time for confession during lent. And I think they’re also concerned about living up to the criticism that is leveled against the church about it being entirely about making people feel guilty and telling people they’re bad.
However, the truth is that I think a lot of people feel bad about themselves without having anything having to do with the church. Isn’t the point of makeovers, plastic surgery, and stapling your stomach because you feel bad about the way you look? Pope Francis has recently brought up concerns about surrogacy because it uses women as an instrument in an effort to purchase a life so that people will feel better about their lives. Even changing a person’s gender stems from a dissatisfaction with who they are and a feeling that they have to change the very genetics of who they are to not feel bad about themselves.
The message of Easter, the message we are called to witness to, isn’t about making people feel guilty. Far from that. It’s that we don’t need to change anything about ourselves to be good. We can’t fix ourselves in fact. We can ask for forgiveness if we’ve done something bad but goodness is not contingent upon someone else’s recognition, not even our own. We are good because we have been created that way. We are created in God’s image likeness and nothing we can do can destroy that. We are called by Jesus to witness to the fact that people have dignity and that they can bring anything that makes them feel bad about themselves to God for healing and forgiveness. How do we give witness to this reality in our interactions with one another, especially the unchurched?
