Reflection for Easter 2024 — Click here for the Scripture readings
Friends, Pope John Paul II woke the world to a whole new vision on Sunday, November 30, 1986, during his visit to Australia. He offered a world facing a Cold War a new way of perceiving itself and responding to the forces militating against the civilization of love. That day he proclaimed, “We are an Easter People, and Alleluia is our song.” Such a proclamation coming from a man who had survived a violent assassination attempt says a lot about what this worldview can do to an individual and society. Despite what he suffered, he was not embittered, shattered, or discouraged. He did not give up on humanity. He taught us that we can still sing Alleluia in this world of ours.
We are an Easter People, created good, not evil, and we are called to radiate Easter joy in our world. John Paul II was hopeful, spurring us on to hope, to exude a joy that is not “shallow, but rather a joy that comes from faith, that grows through unselfish love, that respects the “fundamental duty of love of neighbor, without which it would be unbecoming to speak of Joy.” “This joy,” he further explained, “is demanding; it demands unselfishness; it demands a readiness to say with Mary: “Be it done unto me according to thy word.”
John Paul II was truly an Easter person. He did not deny his own Good Friday of persecution, pain, and near-death experience. No! He acknowledged it. But he rose from it. He rose because he believed in the One who has risen from the dead. Consequently, he sang to the world, “Alleluia.” And we can still hear echo of his song as we gather today.
What an incredible man he is. Although he has died, he is alive. Alive in our memory as we retell his story. Alive even in our celebration of the Resurrection of his Lord and Savior – Jesus Christ. This is the power of Easter. It transforms lives, changes destinies, and evokes a future that is in the Risen One. In this case, Christ’s death, becomes our death. His rising is our rising from sin and shame, making possible the restoration of all that we have lost. Thus, we can sing, “Alleluia, praise God!” We can thank God for who we are becoming.
We are rising from the world of the gulag, a world that Alexander Solzhenitsyn admits was only possible because we lost our awareness of a Supreme Power above — we stopped singing Alleluia; we stopped praising God; we stopped being an Easter People. We are rising from what has happened to us to what God is bringing about in us despite what has happened.
In this way, Easter is God’s act of colonizing the world. By “colonization,” I do not mean in the negative sense of humans enslaving and persecuting each other — I mean it in the positive sense of God acting in time and space, setting humanity free, and making it possible for the human person to flourish and attain his or her full potential. This is not the colonization of a race labelling itself superior and other races inferior and subjugating them. Rather, the colonization that Easter inaugurates makes it possible for humanity to regain its freedom so that we can become fully ourselves. It is a colonization that frees us from the power of sin and death.
It is a colonization that brings about the civilization of love. For where sin and death prevail, love is hindered. And where there is no love, humanity cannot survive nor flourish. According to Pope John Paul II, “Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it” (Redemptor Hominis n. 10). Easter frees us to love and to be loved.
And so, I wish you all, Happy Easter. Happy — not because everyone and everything is okay and perfect around the world. Not at all. But happy because our happiness makes it possible for others to be happy. As Pope John Paul II put it, our happiness is “a joy that comes from faith, that grows through unselfish love.” It is a happiness that arises from loving the other, confronting hate and putting an end to the war within us and outside us.
It is the happiness that has the capacity to free us from our ideological camps and enable us to reengage with the crisis in Palestine and Israel, Russia and Ukraine and other places around the world. “Happy Easter” is a summons to rise from our indifference to world events and helps us to make a commitment to do all within our power to make others experience the happiness we enjoy. This is the social implication of Easter. God colonizes the world by rising from the dead, so that we can colonize the world by rising from all that makes death possible: political scheming, economical greed, racial injustice and our tendency to forget God which results in us forgetting who we are, an Easter People. As Alexander Solzhenitsyn warned, when we forget God, we forget ourselves, and everything goes wrong from there.
We must remember God and remember we are an Easter People. Because, as Pope Francis says, it is self-contradictory for a Christian to be otherwise.
Image: Adobe Stock. By Mushy.
Fr. Francis Afu is a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Armidale, Australia. He is currently undertaking a PhD Research Fellowship in the United States.
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