Pursuing Easter joy

Were you paying attention about ten minutes ago, during the introductory rites, to the Collect that our celebrant prayed just after the Gloria and before the Liturgy of the Word?

May your people exult forever, O God,
in renewed youthfulness of spirit,
so that, rejoicing now in the restored glory of our adoption,
we may look forward in confident hope
to the rejoicing of the day of the resurrection.

We don’t just “look forward to the rejoicing of the day of the resurrection.” We should be “rejoicing now,” “exulting…in renewed youthfulness of spirit.” And very soon now, as the Liturgy of the Eucharist begins, we’ll hear these astonishing words from the Easter Preface:  

Therefore, overcome with paschal joy, every land, every people exults in your praise and even the heavenly Powers, with the angelic hosts, sing together the unending hymn of your glory, as they acclaim: Holy, holy, holy…

This is the reality that the second reading from Revelation speaks to: Our liturgy on earth is a mystical participation of the worship of God in heaven. When the celebrant says “Lift up your hearts!” we reply “We lift them up to the Lord!” We lift up our hearts in joy into the heavenly realms where we join our voices with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven. The joy of heaven begins here on earth.

The shadow of Good Friday and the light of Easter

We live in anxious times. Two years ago we had no Easter festivities because of the pandemic lockdowns: the Lent that never ended. This year Easter has been overshadowed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the threat of wider war, not to mention economic woes: rising gas prices, inflation. And let’s not forget violence and war in other countries: Yemen, Myanmar, and various nations in East, West, and North Africa. Lord, have mercy.

And while the world has always been thus, today we’re bombarded more than ever with constant updates from the world of anxiety and outrage. We carry it around in our pockets, and for too many of us this screen is the first thing we look at when we wake up and the last thing we look at when we go to bed. Too often we spend our days immersed in thoughts of how awful everything is all the time. We tell ourselves that we’re staying informed, when what we’re really doing is poisoning our souls.

And then there are the individual crosses that we all carry, some much heavier than others. Financial worries; marital problems; difficult relationships with parents or children; difficult working conditions; health problems, including mental health issues: depression, anxiety disorders.

We all live every day in the shadow of Good Friday. Don’t let anybody tell you different. And, honestly, Good Friday is much more immediate and vivid to us than Easter. We know from experience what suffering and death look like in a way that none of us knows what resurrection looks like. We know there was an empty tomb and that when Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, and the other disciples, he was neither an apparition nor a mortal man. He had flesh and bones; he had wounds that you could probe; he ate food and in today’s Gospel even did some cooking. But there was something very mysterious about these encounters and even what Jesus looked like. Neither Mary Magdalene nor the two disciples on the Emmaus road recognized Jesus at first. In today’s Gospel there’s that curious phrase: “None of the disciples dared ask him, ‘Who are you?’ They realized it was the Lord”—but not the way they recognized one another.

This is very mysterious, but in this mystery we believe that God is at work overcoming all evil and suffering and death, and in this belief is the deepest root of our joy. We must pursue this joy, or we’ll get stuck on Good Friday. We live every day in the shadow of Good Friday, but it is also possible to live in the light of Easter.

Easter is our identity

Easter is not just one day or even just an eight-week season. Easter is our identity; it is who we are as Catholic Christians. You may have heard the famous saying of Pope St. John Paul II: “We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song!” The context of that famous saying is illuminating. Let me read some it to you, from a 1986 Angelus reflection:

Joy is the keynote of the Christian message. My wish is that the Christian message may bring joy to all who open their hearts to it: “joy to children, joy to parents, joy to families and to friends, joy to workers and scholars, joy to the sick and to the elderly, joy to all humanity.”…

Faith is our source of joy. We believe in a God who created us so that we might enjoy human happiness — in some measure on earth, in its fullness in heaven. We are meant to have our human joys: the joy of living, the joy of love and friendship, the joy of work well done. We who are Christians have a further cause for joy: like Jesus, we know that we are loved by God our Father. This love transforms our lives and fills us with joy. It makes us see that Jesus did not come to lay burdens upon us. He came to teach us what it means to be fully happy and fully human…

We do not pretend that life is all beauty. We are aware of darkness and sin, of poverty and pain. But we know Jesus has conquered sin and passed through his own pain to the glory of the Resurrection. And we live in the light of his Paschal Mystery — the mystery of his Death and Resurrection. “We are an Easter People and Alleluia is our song!” We are not looking for a shallow joy but rather a joy that comes from faith, that grows through unselfish love, that respects the “fundamental duty of love of neighbor…” We realize that joy is demanding; it demands unselfishness; it demands a readiness to say with Mary: “Be it done unto me according to thy word.”

Pursuing joy

How do we pursue Christian joy, especially in this Easter season but also throughout the year?

Begin with the conviction that your joys as well as your sorrows matter to God, and that joy as well as sorrow is for this world, not just the world to come. When bad things happen, we often tell ourselves and one other that God has a plan, that God works for good in all things. We look for meaning in suffering, but never forget that there is great meaning in joy. Every good gift in this world speaks to us of God’s goodness and love.

Ask God for the gift of joy. I hope few of us would dare to try to tackle the self-denial and sacrifices of Lent without praying for God’s help; why should we not ask him to fill us with Easter joy?

We can also ask him to lighten our burdens, the crosses we carry. He may or he may not, but we can ask. This also is in the liturgy, in the beautiful embolism prayer right after the Our Father:

Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil; graciously grant peace in our days, that, by the help of your mercy we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress…

Don’t listen to those who tell you that we should only pray for strength to endure hardship, and not to be spared it! Pray for both!

Faith, gratitude, and hardship

Remember, the source of our joy is faith. If you want joy, nourish your faith. Draw close to God in daily prayer, though devotional reading, though love of neighbor and service to others. The closer we draw to God and the more deeply we depend on him, the deeper our joy will be.

Cultivate gratitude. Resolve to develop the habit of dedicating your first thoughts on waking up each morning to gratitude to God for the gift of a new day. You know, just as we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection each week on Sunday and each year in the Easter season, so every day we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection in a special way in the morning, as the sun rises. Every night we lay our bodies down and surrender ourselves to sleep, like a rehearsal for dying. In the morning the sun rises, we draw breath, open our eyes: God gives us a new day. Put off reaching for your phone. Let your first thought be gratitude.

We must learn, too, to rejoice even in hardship, come hell or high water, pandemic lockdowns or high gas prices or whatever else. In the first reading, the disciples rejoiced that they had been found worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the name. When that difficult person in your life says something hurtful to you, respond with charity and patience, and take joy in pleasing the Lord. I’m not talking about enabling abuse. That’s a complicated discussion, God willing, for another homily.

God out there and in here

John Paul II talks about the human joys of living. Give yourself permission to do things that give you joy. Many people who never go to church say “I can find God walking in the woods.” Okay, when’s the last time you went walking in the woods? Not just them, you! Weather gets nicer this time of year. Take a Sunday afternoon. God is out there.

God is also in here. Participate wholeheartedly in the Mass, above all with your heart and spirit, but also with your voice and your body. Those of you who attend the Easter Vigil, the Solemnity of solemnities, may remember a dramatic line in the Exsultet, the great hymn of praise sung once a year by the deacon, which begins by calling on all creation to rejoice with the coming of Easter: the angels and hosts of heaven; the whole world; and especially the Church, and there’s this great line: “Let this holy building shake with joy, filled with the mighty voices of the peoples.”

That’s you. You are not an audience. You are the faithful. In a few minutes, our celebrant will urge you to lift up your hearts. With your reply, let this holy building shake with joy, filled with the mighty voices of the peoples. Heaven and earth draw so close here in the liturgy. Own your responses. Sing the hymns. Open your hymnals and sing. “He who sings prays twice,” St. Augustine said.

Rejoice in the Lord always. I say again: Rejoice! Let us be overcome with paschal joy. We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song. Alleluia, Christ is risen! Amen!