By DONALD DeMARCO
Christmas may be the most popular of all Catholic feast days, but Easter is the most profound. The former may be more enjoyable, but the latter is more holy. The Nativity may be more ecumenical, but the Resurrection is more distinctly Christian. Santa Claus is more universal than the Easter Bunny. Hollywood has produced far more pictures about Christmas than about Easter.
Nonetheless, Easter transcends Christmas in spiritual significance. If there were the Nativity but not the Resurrection, Christianity would have come to naught. St. Paul, whose conversion is connected with the Easter event, says: “If Christ has not been raised, our faith is in vain” (1 Cor. 15:14). As a result of sacrificing Himself, Jesus Christ rescued humanity from the shackles of sin. His Resurrection is a promise of a new life and teaches all His followers that their faith in Him is alive and powerful.
A traditional practice commemorating Easter is the joyous greeting, “Christ is risen,” which elicits the response, “He is risen indeed!” It reminds people that Jesus is alive and is dwelling in their midst welcoming them to a new life. In this regard, it conveys a decidedly more profound spiritual message than “Merry Christmas.” This is an exchange that should not go out of practice.
One must take note that Paul uses the words “been raised” rather than “risen.” Christ did not raise Himself up from the dead. He was raised by the Father. Christ completed His mission when He died on the cross. The Father raised Him up from the dead after which the Holy Spirit was sent into the world to put fire into the souls of Christians and guide the development of the Church. Thus, Easter must be seen as a trinitarian event, involving the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Easter stands in relation to Christmas as a fulfillment stands to a commencement.
Easter embraces the cross and Resurrection, death and life. In this way, its message is intensely realistic and intensely hopeful. There is death. We all know this, though we often try to deny it, dodge it, or be distracted from it. Yet a person who tries to avoid thinking about death, which follows inexorably, cannot be living life realistically or authentically. The Resurrection offers the hope that life will follow death. This hope allows one to accept death and thereby acknowledge the fundamental realities of human existence.
Given the hope that Easter’s Resurrection provides, the Christian can accept Christ’s mandate to take up one’s cross daily in order to rise anew with the dead Lord. As St. Paul states, “For while we live, we are always being given to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh” (2 Cor. 4:11).
“Do not abandon yourselves to despair,” exclaimed St. John Paul II. “We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.”
Easter, which conjoins the realism of death (the cross) with the optimism of hope (the
Resurrection), provides the Paschal message, continuous with the Jewish Passover, that death will pass to life. The Passover (and Paschal Mystery), therefore, must be taken seriously. We cannot merely pass over its profound implications.
The experience of love is a foretaste of Paradise. But in this “valley of tears” we know all too well that those whom we love are mortal. Love demands infinity. It does not want to be terminated. The Resurrection means that love is stronger than death and its ultimate fulfillment can be realized.
T.S. Eliot’s phrase, “The fire and the rose are one,” is compatible with the Easter message that “the thorn and the lily are one.” We can be realistic and embrace death, as well as disease, difficulty, discouragement, and all the other forms of human discontent that assail us, because, as Christians, we believe in the historical event of Easter which brings the perennially hopeful message that life will conquer death.
Easter, then, is virtually synonymous with joy, life, fertility, realism, and hope. It is the fulfilling moment of Christianity and proclaims that the Incarnation completed in the cross and Resurrection be communicated through the Church to all its living members.
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(Dr. Donald DeMarco’ latest book is Why I Am Pro-life and Not Politically Correct, available through Amazon.com.)
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