Michael Kelly
“Easter glory fills the sky” were the words of the hymns proclaimed at many livestreamed Masses on Sunday. We’ve heard it again and again down the years and the rousing words gladden the heart.
But, it’s a very different Easter this year and there is no mistaking the fact that the joy of the resurrection is tempered by the fact that our time in the desert – our extended Lent – continues.
Many people are cocooning, others are only allowed out for essential errands and some exercise. People are fearful: many are frightened that they or the people they love will get the coronavirus. Shopkeepers and supermarket workers are anxious as they go about their lives, ensuring that the supply of food continues uninterrupted. In hospitals, doctors, nurses, cleaners, porters and kitchen staff work long hours to ensure that those who need treatment can get it and that the system will be able to cope.
Uncertainty
We all live with the same sense of uncertainty about when this will end and the lack of knowledge about how many more people will be infected and affected.
In a reflection for Easter this week, the now freed Cardinal George Pell observed that suffering is easier for people of faith than for atheists. He’s right: Christians can make sense out of suffering – it may not make it easier to endure in the short-term and it is certainly no cloak of invincibility – but our hope is in Christ who overcame death.
Hope is the assurance that God is always with us”
This hope – the person of Jesus – is not the same as optimism. I know some very pessimistic believers, but they are filled with hope. Likewise, I know many optimists who have no hope. For Christians, hope is the assurance that God is with us always – and that our suffering has meaning. And that if we unite our sufferings to Christ’s, our suffering will be redemptive.
St John Paul II captured it beautifully in 2002 when he addressed participants at World Youth Day: “Although I have lived through much darkness, under harsh totalitarian regimes, I have seen enough evidence to be unshakably convinced that no difficulty, no fear is so great that it can completely suffocate the hope that springs eternal in the hearts of the young…do not let that hope die! Stake your lives on it!”
This is the hope that we need to keep alive in the throes of this terrible pestilence for in the words of the Letter to the Romans Spe salvi facti sumus (in hope we were saved).
Happy Easter.