'Easter is behind us as well as ahead of us’
by Father Michael B. McGarry, president of the Paulist Fathers
March 7, 2011

Father Joachim Lally gives ashes at the Cathedral of St. Andrew in Grand Rapids, Mich. Other captions are in files.Father Joachim Lally gives ashes at the Cathedral of St. Andrew in Grand Rapids, Mich. ENLARGE PHOTO | START SLIDESHOW

Father Michael B. McGarry, CSPFather Michael B. McGarry, CSP

Thinking of Easter before Ash Wednesday is an awkward exercise. It’s almost like trying to see around the corner before you get there, the “corner” being Lent and Holy Week. Our intuition tells us that, first, we must, with Christ, face up to 40 days of penance and fasting. Then we follow the scene-by-scene drama of Holy Thursday and Good Friday – and then we can sample the delights of Easter.

The church suggests otherwise. For our Easter faith is what we celebrate explicitly every Sunday (even those in Lent!) throughout the year. That is, drawing Easter’s energy is not an annual reward for enduring Lent; rather it is a robust, ongoing experience of the triumph that has already happened. Easter is behind us as well as ahead of us.

That’s the first reflection; now the second.

When for 11 years I celebrated Easter where it happened the first time – in Jerusalem – I would sometimes overhear international television commentators intone, “Today in Jerusalem, Christians from around the world observe the great spiritual feast of Easter.” The irony in such a designation is that Easter is not, primarily, a spiritual feast at all. It’s a bodily feast. That is, what was shockingly and irreducibly true about Jesus’ resurrection is that this feast is about a body. So the news announcer might more correctly say, “This is the great bodily feast that Christians around the world celebrate.” For three days at the end of Lent, we follow Jesus liturgically through the last days of his life, his crucifixion and then … we celebrate that Jesus’ bodily life is not ended but transformed into Resurrection by the gracious love of his Father.

Why is this worth noting? Because we Christians celebrate our faith bodily. Think of water, colors, stained-glass windows, oil, making the sign of the cross, kneeling, bread, wine, vestments, songs, musical instruments, incense – all things that engage our bodies, our senses. The Resurrection underscores the sacredness of life in the body which our gracious Father refused to allow death to overcome.

The Church of the Flagallation in Jerusalem, where Jesus was whipped and beaten.The Church of the Flagallation in Jerusalem, where Jesus was whipped and beaten. ENLARGE PHOTO

We Paulists, like all Christians, live our faith through word and sacrament. In so doing, we secure our faith on a resurrected bodily Lord. So, fundamentally, there is no such thing as a simply spiritual Christianity. Our faith compels us Catholics worship by feeding the hungry, working for housing, taking care of the sick, visiting the imprisoned, working for prolife life issues in its many manifestations, raising our children, cherishing our worldly environment and many others. Christianity that finds itself only in the cloud of the mind or virtual reality or good intentions is not that of Jesus’ disciples. Indeed, in the end, we will be judged not by the amount of our prayer but by the amount of our sharing the preciousness of life in the flesh (see Matthew 25). I want to be clear that I am not pitting prayer against good works or saying that prayer in the head is worthless. What I am raising up is that we Paulists – in our foundations, our ministries, indeed our own prayer – minister best, with and for you, when we are present to one another in our whole being.

So as we approach Easter, going “around the corner” of Lent and Holy Week, we commit out faith precisely to a bodily, risen Lord. In the end, we express our Easter faith through Lent by engaging our bodies a bit differently – prayer, fasting, and almsgiving – so that we might embrace the Risen Lord anew when this year’s Easter celebration arrives.

Photo Gallery
 
The Garden of Gethsemane in Jerusalem. The Church of the Condemnation in Rome, where Jesus was condemned to death. A tree in the Upper Room, where Jesus shared the Last Supper with his disciples. Inside the Tomb of Jesus in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,  Jerusalem.