Seek to experience the Easter season with joy and fervor

Easter Sunday always ushers in a season of joy. The joy of springtime, the joy of spending time with family, and the joy of celebrating the resurrection of Jesus. I think this year brings a particular joy in being able to celebrate this great feast with our parish families. Having to celebrate Easter last year from our homes was certainly a unique experience, and a difficult one for many people. It brings me a special joy this year after having gone through the sacrifice of last year to be able to celebrate Easter with you and to see all of our priests and parish families celebrating the Easter liturgies together.

I am struck by this relation between the joy that comes after difficulty. We see this theme so often in the Scriptures. Easter itself is a celebration of life after the trials and sufferings that came with Good Friday. Peter experienced great joy at his triple confession of love for Jesus that restored the pain of his triple denial. There is always a link between suffering and joy, between death and new life. It is by passing through the “valley of the shadow of death,” as the psalm states, that we are able to experience the full joy of the glory of the risen Lord.

This is true even in our own lives. For example, we all take up a particular penance for Lent so that we can experience the great joy of Easter. It’s important to note this connection between Lent and Easter. I once heard it said that we should take the Easter season just as seriously as we took the Lenten season. If we enter into the trials of Lent with great fervor, persevere in our penances with zeal and courage, then it is only right that we enter into the joy of Easter with that same fervor. When we enter into a season of suffering, it actually prepares us to better receive and experience the joy that comes after. Easter affords us the hope that joy always comes after suffering, that death never has the last word, that Christ is truly triumphant over every evil, every sin, and every darkness.

So as we experience the Easter season, seek to experience that joy with fervor!!! God desires us not to be discouraged, sad or despondent, but to be radiant in the joy of the Lord, in the joy of the resurrected life to which we are all called. The simple joys of a beautiful day, a good conversation, or a shared meal with a loved one bring a lightness to our hearts that helps us to experience God in the day to day.

But the ultimate joy is found in the presence of the Lord with us. Easter reminds us that not even death can separate us from God’s presence with us. As St. Paul memorably writes in his letter to the Romans, “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39). No, these things do not separate us from the love of God, but they can in fact reveal the love of God to us in a particular way. The experience of trials opens our hearts to experience the love of God more deeply because my heart is more ready and desiring to receive him.

This past year has given us many trials, to be sure. We have much to grieve over, much to acknowledge as hard and difficult. But as we gather together to celebrate Easter in our churches for the first time in two years, we are reminded that we have much joy that awaits us. We have much that God desires to give to us, to speak to our hearts. The joy of Easter is never overshadowed by darkness. There is no such thing as a darkness that can squelch the light. On the contrary, darkness has to immediately flee when the light enters. Jesus is the true and lasting light that “shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).

As we celebrate the joy of Easter as a parish family and a diocese, may God shower his abundant blessings upon you, that in the midst of the trials of life, his light may always shine forth!!

Happy Easter!!