Easter Sunday
Fr. Albert
St. Peter Catholic Church, New Iberia
Christmas or Easter? Which is your favorite? I think most people generally prefer Christmas. Decorations, all kinds of great foods and desserts, and, of course, presents! Plus, Christmas is all about family and the Baby Jesus, and who doesn’t love the baby Jesus? And, really, that’s great. Christmas is about the Incarnation, about God becoming man. Now every human being has a new dignity, a new value, a new hope because God became one of us.
Imagine – it’s impossible, but still, imagine – that we found a way to transplant human consciousness into the bodies of animals. All of a sudden, we’d start being much more careful about how we treat animals. All of them would be valuable as potential life savers and we’d need to be careful that we never harmed an animal body with a human mind. It’s an odd analogy, but really, God became man so now human beings are much more than they were. That’s one of the reasons that Christmas is such a big deal.
And yet, as important and beautiful as Christmas is, as sentimental and consoling – Easter goes far beyond it. Of course, the two are connected and cannot really be separated, but Christmas is a beginning, Easter is the goal. At Christmas, all human beings and all human activities gained a new value. God lived as one of us. He shared our work, our joys, hopes, sorrows, and pains. He brought divinity into our world. But, with Easter, Jesus Christ brought us into divinity. At Christmas, God became Man. At Easter, men become like God.
When Jesus Christ rose from the dead, he did not rise in an invisible and spiritual way. No, the women found his tomb open and his burial cloths empty. His body was gone because he it came back to life. But not to ordinary life; no, to a new and supernatural life. Never to die again, able to pass through locked doors, shining with a new light – this glorified body of Jesus Christ is an amazing reality, but it is also a promise. You too will rise with your body transformed and raised up. That’s why I said it would be impossible for us to transfer into animal bodies – because we are human beings: soul and body. We were created that way, we live that way, and, at the end of time, we will stay that way forever… for better or for worse…
So, the resurrection of Jesus allows us to be glorified. Here’s the best part: that glorification, that transformation of Easter doesn’t just happen after we’re dead. No, it begins now. Yes, our bodies are going to let us down and ultimately fail because they are earthly bodies. But even while our earthly bodies fade we can begin to taste the life of glory. That life of glory includes a sense of purpose and meaning, a real and lasting peace, and experiencing what it means to be loved at the deepest level of your being. No amount of pleasure… power… or money can compare to those things. And that is not even considering the fact that all of those things will fade, but the glory of heaven, the glory of becoming like God, will never fade. But we have to cooperate with that transformation.
Don’t just take it from me. Look at your missalette again, at the second reading, the second option. 1 Corinthians. That is a letter from St. Paul, a man far wiser, holier, and happier than anyone I know. He says “Do you not know that a little yeast leavens all the dough?” Wait, Paul, why are we talking about yeast? “So that you may become a fresh batch of dough.” Why would I want to be a fresh batch of dough? “For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed.” And what does that mean?
Paul is using a metaphor here. When Jesus showed up, everyone in the world was like moldy old bread, infested with parasites and doomed to be discarded forever. But Christ became the Paschal lamb. “Paschal,” like the Paschal candle. In every other language, when we say “Easter,” they say Pasch or Pascha or Pesach. It means “Passover.” When a Paschal Lamb is sacrificed, we “pass over” from death to life. When that Paschal lamb is Jesus Christ, God Incarnate, we don’t just “pass over” we are re-created.
So, if we were infested, moldy bread before, Christ’s sacrifice made us new. When we were baptized, when we embraced the death of the Paschal Lamb, Jesus Christ, we were recreated. We have become a fresh batch of dough. But here’s the catch… it’s not really a catch, Jesus is pretty up front about it. Being made new, becoming a new batch of dough, a new human being doesn’t mean we never have to worry about anything again. If we are not careful, that new batch of dough can end up just like we were before, infested and rotten.
That is why Paul warns us that a little yeast leavens the whole batch. At the moment of Baptism, at the moment you finish a confession, you are a pure batch. But each sin adds a little… or a lot of yeast. That yeast spreads and begins to corrupt our souls all over again. The reason that is a problem is not that God is looking to catch you and punish you, but that the corruption prevents us from accepting his gift. He rose from the dead to show us the way through death and into eternal glory, but we have to follow him. Corruption and sin lead us away, blind us, and make us think that God and heaven are boring!
No death, no pain, no existential dread. No threats of World War, no corrupt and incompetent politicians, no lunatic terrorists! That’s just a tiny bit of what heaven and glorification offers… and we think it’s boring! Or Unimportant! But here we are now, celebrating… reliving the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christ is Risen, he is truly risen and he wants us to rise with him. So yes, we celebrate Christmas and we celebrate Easter and both give us hope and remind us what life is really about.
But Easter isn’t quite like Christmas. Christmas remembers Jesus’ birth and it celebrates the incarnation, but Easter…. Easter makes present the resurrection. Especially today, we mystically come into contact with the victory of Christ. We do it in prayer, and we do it especially in the Eucharist. That is because Jesus didn’t just rise from the dead to tell us that we have something to look forward to. He did it to transform us now. If we want eternal life in the future… if we want a life worth living right now, then we must hear what the Angel tells the women at the tomb. We must go to Galilee to see Jesus. We have accepted our Baptism and we are about to renew our Baptismal promises. We have become a new batch of dough, a new creation.
But beware the yeast of sin, the yeast of distraction, the yeast of pride. Rejoice today and really celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. But every single Sunday is a miniature Easter. If you want to avoid that corruption and embrace the gift God has given us, then don’t let today be just another annual event. No, stay with it, live it daily, celebrate it weekly, and remember it always.
“Celebrate the feast… with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” No matter our sins and faults, if we approach with sincerity, God will forgive and guide us. And the Truth is this: the world will offer you pleasure, power, and money but you were made for so much more. You, each and every one of you is meant for greatness, for eternal glory and perfect happiness. All you have to do is follow him… so, what are you waiting for?