Put to the test
Joyous Easter! And don’t forget all the people who are suffering right now, Pope Benedict reminded us all in his annual Easter “Urbi et Orbi” address – to the city of Rome, the Church and the world. Just as Christians were breaking into exultation over this holiest and most triumphant of days on the calendar, Benedict sounded the fatherly directive to pay attention to the world’s crises and catastrophes. After all, the deliverance of this event rose from a catastrophe.
We listen today with renewed emotion to the announcement proclaimed by the angels on the dawn of the first day after the Sabbath, to Mary of Magdala and to the women at the sepulchre: “Why do you search among the dead for one who is alive? He is not here, he is risen!” (Lk 24:5-6).
It is not difficult to imagine the feelings of these women at that moment: feelings of sadness and dismay at the death of their Lord, feelings of disbelief and amazement before a fact too astonishing to be true. But the tomb was open and empty: the body was no longer there. Peter and John, having been informed of this by the women, ran to the sepulchre and found that they were right. The faith of the Apostles in Jesus, the expected Messiah, had been submitted to a severe trial by the scandal of the cross. At his arrest, his condemnation and death, they were dispersed. Now they are together again, perplexed and bewildered. But the Risen One himself comes in response to their thirst for greater certainty. This encounter was not a dream or an illusion or a subjective imagination; it was a real experience, even if unexpected, and all the more striking for that reason. “Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, peace be with you!” (Jn 20:19).
At these words their faith, which was almost spent within them, was re-kindled.
This is a good reminder of how much of life turns on the ability to hope. The apostles and disciples were devastated when Christ was crucified, their hope shattered. It was so completely gone, Benedict reminds here, that even when the apostle Thomas encountered the risen Christ, he was utterly skeptical.
We may all be tempted by the disbelief of Thomas. Suffering, evil, injustice, death, especially when it strikes the innocent such as children who are victims of war and terrorism, of sickness and hunger, does not all of this put our faith to the test?
What kind of Easter message is this, you may ask, filled with reminders of doom and gloom. It’s the perfect Easter message, come to think of it…which is the point.
Paradoxically the disbelief of Thomas is most valuable to us in these cases because it helps to purify all false concepts of God and leads us to discover his true face: the face of a God who, in Christ, has taken upon himself the wounds of injured humanity.
Thomas has received from the Lord, and has in turn transmitted to the Church, the gift of a faith put to the test by the passion and death of Jesus and confirmed by meeting him risen. His faith was almost dead but was born again thanks to his touching the wounds of Christ, those wounds that the Risen One did not hide but showed, and continues to point out to us in the trials and sufferings of every human being.
Faith put to the test. Where there is still faith in this modern culture, it is surely tested.
How many wounds, how much suffering there is in the world! Natural calamities and human tragedies that cause innumerable victims and enormous material destruction are not lacking. My thoughts go to recent events in Madagascar, in the Solomon Islands, in Latin America and in other regions of the world.
I am thinking of the scourge of hunger, of incurable diseases, of terrorism and kidnapping of people, of the thousand faces of violence which some people attempt to justify in the name of religion, of contempt for life, of the violation of human rights and the exploitation of persons. I look with apprehension at the conditions prevailing in several regions of Africa. In Darfur and in the neighbouring countries there is a catastrophic, and sadly to say underestimated, humanitarian situation.
There’s a call to take some action embedded in that message. Don’t look the other way, don’t underestimate the catastrophe. Do something.
In Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo the violence and looting of the past weeks raises fears for the future of the Congolese democratic process and the reconstruction of the country. In Somalia the renewed fighting has driven away the prospect of peace and worsened a regional crisis, especially with regard to the displacement of populations and the traffic of arms. Zimbabwe is in the grip of a grievous crisis and for this reason the Bishops of that country in a recent document indicated prayer and a shared commitment for the common good as the only way forward.
What?! Grievous crisis and human catastrophe is gripping whole nations, and the best answer is…pray and work for the common good? Yes. That’s precisely the message of Easter, which is how we got to 2007 from the time Christ appeared to the apostles after the resurrection and sent them out to the known world. They had what they carried on their backs, along with the mandate to spread faith, hope and charity. That’s still the mandate, said Benedict, in this troubled world.
Dear Brothers and sisters, through the wounds of the Risen Christ we can see the evils which afflict humanity with the eyes of hope. In fact, by his rising the Lord has not taken away suffering and evil from the world but has vanquished them at their roots by the superabundance of his grace (emphasis added). He has countered the arrogance of evil with the supremacy of his love. He has left us the love that does not fear death, as the way to peace and joy. “Even as I have loved you he said to his disciples before his death so you must also love one another” (cf. Jn 13:34).
The world’s true superpower (see post below). It’s strength cannot be underestimated.
