Our Easter

One of my earliest memories is of my parents piling us kids in the car on a Sunday afternoon to take a drive. We headed downtown, far from the familiar environs of our neighborhood or any one that we knew. Past houses and shops that had seen better days, we finally arrived at our destination: a broad open space with giant oak trees and green sloping lawns. It was a cemetery. We had come to pray at a particular grave: the grave of my uncle, my father’s brother Paul, who died at only 25 years old several years before I was born.

This memory – which has deepened through the years, as our family repeated that visit frequently, even to this day – has stayed with me perhaps because I’ve always felt a connection to that uncle that I never met. I was named after him; when I was born, his name became my middle name, Paul. Even as a child, it struck me that here was someone with whom I was linked in the deepest way but who was no longer part of this world, who has literally passed away from this reality. Even from a young age, I became aware of the thought: what happened to him will happen to me, and where he has gone I will some day be.

Childe Hassam, Colonial Graveyard at Lexington (c. 1891)

The Greek writer Thucydides once said that every story in some way or another is about the human struggle against mortality. Within each of us there is an innate, unrelenting desire to live forever, and to believe that such is possible, and yet standing against that is the certitude and finality of the grave. Our readings this evening [at the Vigil] told us of how God is intimately bound up in this story, this great struggle within the human heart against the fortune of death. Abraham trusted in God’s promise to make him the father of many nations; but then as a test, God asked him to offer up the very one by whom that would happen, his only son Isaac, and Abraham remained faithful to the one who would be faithful to him. Moses and the Israelites had been brought out of slavery in Egypt, only to face impending death from Pharaoh’s armies; but God saved his people and destroyed their adversaries by the parting of the Red Sea. Through the words of the prophet Isaiah, God remembered that his people have been unfaithful; but he pledged he will wipe away their sins and restore them to the glory he had promised. In these readings and throughout the Old Testament, God promises that death will not triumph over life, that sin will be conquered by redemption, that by his loving mercy he will achieve a victory to overcome even the grave.

But how could he show this to us? With all apparent evidence to the contrary – wars and famines and pandemics, the deaths of our friends and families, our own physical frailties and aging bodies – how, with all of that, could he show us, convince us, inspire us to believe that death, in fact, does not have the last word?

The only way, perhaps, is by means of what St. Mark tells us in the Gospel: that early in the morning, women came to a tomb and found that the stone had been rolled back. This grave *was* empty; the One whom they had come to visit, gone. “He has been raised; he is not here.” Here, at last, is reason to doubt the total dominion of death, to truly believe in the possibility of eternal life – proof not by presence but by absence, by faith: death robbed of its power, and the One who had died raised up from its grasp.

As the Church sings in the Exsulstet, the great Easter Proclamation, it is this belief by which Christians are distinguished from the world: set apart from worldly vices, set free from earthly concerns, raised to a new and eternal possibility – that death has been defeated for all who believe in Jesus Christ. Our sorrows, our griefs, our fears of death – all are overcome for those who are connected to the Risen One. “Death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor 15:54). Even if for a while we might have to suffer, to wait patiently in sleep, we can say: what happened to him will happen to me, and where he has gone I will some day be.

The Holy Women at Christ's Tomb by Francesco Albani (c. 1645)

Having professed this belief, we must also live it out in actions. In acts of charity and attention to the poor, in seeking always to forgive and work toward reconciliation, in striving for sanctity each day, in a spirit always attentive to the other and willing to endure trials for the good of the other – by these works, we demonstrate that our faith is not hollow words. Every year, this great feast is made new for us so that by it we can be made new, enlivened once again to live for the God of Life.

My friends, Easter is not just about Jesus's Resurrection; it is about ours, as well. He has overcome the grave, and we await with joy and hope the final day when that reality will be unveiled for us too. I still pray for my uncle Paul, and visit his grave, and look forward to the day I will finally be able to meet him. I recognize now that besides our common name, he and I share a connection far more profound: we share a Savior, Jesus Christ, and it is His name that we call upon together, from either side of the grave, until His Easter joy has become ours too.