My good friend, a retired priest from the Diocese of Hamilton, Ontario, took a group of kids to the Dominican Republic more than 30 years ago. One day he went out to the outlying regions in Consuelo, called the Bateyes, which are small rural settlements designed for plantation workers. They are very impoverished areas, lacking basic services such as clean drinking water. My friend remembers meeting a woman who was blind in one eye and who had one arm that was severed. She was in her fifties and, of course, she was living in great poverty. Through a translator, my friend said to her: “I’m sorry.”
He was sorry for her condition, for her suffering. She read his sorrow on his face and simply said to him in reply: “Padre: don’t forget, there is going to be a resurrection.”
My friend felt tremendously uplifted by her words. In her suffering, and in her faith and hope in the resurrection, she lifted him up. This lady experienced something of the empty tomb. Through her witness we can experience the reality of the resurrection without actually having been at the empty tomb. She is an example of those Christ referred to in the Gospel of John: “Blessed are those who have not seen but believe.” Her Easter joy transcended all her misery.
The word ‘gospel’ means good news. Over the years, I have often asked my students: “What is the good news?” Many of them were at a loss for an answer; only a few could tell me. Many Catholic adults today reduce the gospel to “a collection of rules and prohibitions… to the repetition of doctrinal principles, to bland or nervous moralizing” (Aparecida, 12). “You shall not kill.” Is that good news? “Do not take the Lord’s name in vain… You shall not commit adultery… You shall not steal…” Are these messages of the good news? Not at all: “…for through the law comes consciousness of sin” (Rom 3, 20).
Recently, I was part of a 90-day spiritual exercise at a local parish that included rigorous disciplines, such as cold showers; fasting and abstinence on Wednesdays and Fridays; no social media; no sports on TV; no alcohol; working out three times a week; and more. There were many good things about this exercise — particularly the weekly fraternity meetings — but it was very easy to fall into a discussion of how we failed in this or that discipline during the week: “I was just too tired to work out this week,” or “I had a glass of wine,” or “I just couldn’t take cold showers this time around,” etc. This was not the good news, for we were talking about our failures. If anything, it was good news that the program ended on Easter Sunday!
And this leads me to what the gospel really is, namely, Easter. The good news is the resurrection of Christ. Death has been defeated, for death had no power over him. So much of our sinful behavior is rooted in a deep but unconscious fear of death. The good news is that death no longer has the final word over your life or my life, and we know this because one Person has risen from the dead. His resurrection means that, through him, you too can rise to new and everlasting life. To live in him and to die in him is to live and die in the sure hope of resurrection. Furthermore, we have the hope of again seeing and touching all those we loved in life and who have died. Through him, we will rise with a glorified body, not subject to sickness and death, and there are theological reasons to believe that we won’t look like we do now (which is more good news to many of us).
I remember walking into my friend’s office and seeing a picture of a little girl, about 4 or 5 years of age. I asked my friend who she was. “That’s little Stephanie,” he said, before explaining that, one afternoon, Stephanie choked on a sandwich and died. It was one of the saddest days of my friend’s priesthood: walking into the hospital and seeing her young mother and father standing beside the hospital gurney with the lifeless body of their four-year-old girl lying on it. About six months later, in the middle of a dark winter night, my friend had a powerful dream-vision of Stephanie. She was not a 4-year-old child, but a young adult woman in her 20s, surrounded by a bright white light that was like nothing my friend had ever seen. She said to him: “I can’t see my parents now, but I can come to you. Tell them not to worry, that I am happy.” When my friend reached out to her, he suddenly found himself sitting up in bed, in the pitch blackness of night. It was about 3 am. What struck me, among other things, is that Stephanie did not appear as a child, but as a young adult.
The gospel is a message of salvation. But, more to the point, our resurrection to new life begins now, in this life. Salvation is ours today, it has been freely given as sheer gift. And we are saved by faith, not by works. As St. Paul says: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast” (Eph 2, 8-9). We did not, nor can we, save ourselves. Even our own cooperation with grace — our free decision to follow the lead and promptings of divine grace — is itself a grace, for we were given the power to cooperate and to follow. So, we cannot take any credit for where we are today.
The good news is that our sins have been forgiven: “In him we have redemption by his blood, the forgiveness of transgressions, in accord with the riches of his grace that he lavished upon us” (Eph 1, 7-8). For example, there is nothing that the paralyzed man in the Gospel of Mark did to earn God’s forgiveness (Mk 2, 1-8). The friends who brought him to Jesus believed that Jesus could and would heal him. indeed, nothing more was required. Christ’s healing of his paralysis was a resurrection. The man could freely stand up! That’s what the forgiveness of our sins is, namely, our theosis.
The problem, of course, is that we have a very hard time believing and even receiving forgiveness. Many of us still believe, deep down, that we have to do something to earn it in some way. But to think this way is to very subtly and perhaps unconsciously reject the gift of grace he offers us. Instead of “all glory and honor are yours,” some of us would rather a portion of that glory be directed our way. But God loved us while we were sinners: “God proves His love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5, 8).
The focus of our lives must not be on our sins, our failures, our shortcomings, but on the immeasurable and gratuitous nature of his love for each one of us. Only then can our life be a genuine response to that love, a joy, not a burden.
Image: “When the skies open up” (CC BY 2.0) by Shiva Shenoy
Douglas McManaman was born in Toronto and grew up in Montreal. He studied philosophy at the University of St. Jerome’s College (Waterloo) and theology at the University of Montreal. He is a permanent deacon of the Archdiocese of Toronto and ministers to those with mental illness. He taught Religion, Philosophy and the Theory of Knowledge for 32 years in Southern Ontario, and he is the current chaplain of the Toronto Chapter of the Catholic Teachers Guild. He is a Senior Lecturer at Niagara University and teach Marriage Prep for the Archdiocese of Toronto. His recent books include Why Be Afraid? (Justin Press, 2014) and The Logic of Anger (Justin Press, 2015), and Christ Lives! (Justin Press, 2017), as well as The Morally Beautiful (Amazon.ca), Introduction to Philosophy for Young People (Amazon.ca), Readings in the Theory of Knowledge, Basic Catholicism, and A Treatise on the Four Cardinal Virtues. He has two podcast channels: Podcasts for the Religious, and Podcasts for Young Philosophers. He currently lives with his wife and daughter in Ontario, Canada.
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