Supplements

CURRENT ISSUE

The easter mystery: 2010

Dear People of God:

“Happy Easter!”
I suspect that to many people this traditional Easter Sunday greeting has more or less the same meaning as “Merry Christmas!” Both greetings contain a cheerful, upbeat message that might be translated as, “Enjoy your “holiday” with family and friends!” “Have a great Easter dinner and have fun with your children as they open their Easter baskets and hunt for the hidden Easter eggs!” “The cold clouds and snow of winter are gone. Spring is here!”

It probably does not usually mean, “Get out your New Testament and prayerfully read St. Paul’s teachings on the risen Christ Jesus and the Gospel accounts of the resurrection and ask yourself what being raised from the dead might mean!” “Take some time to look back over your observance of Lent (prayer, fasting, almsgiving) and your participation in Holy Week (going to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, attending each day of the Sacred Triduum: Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Vigil) and contemplate the mystery by which you are reborn!” “Commit yourself to reaching out to the new members of the Catholic Church, who were baptized during the Easter Vigil at your parish, and offer to support them in their journey of faith!” “Face the certainty of your own death, give your life to the Lord and live each day to the fullest, as if it were your last!”

For some people the usual, routine “Happy Easter!” is simply not enough. Something impels them to go further, dig deeper and try to gain a fuller appreciation of what being “raised from the dead” meant for Jesus of Nazareth and what it might mean for them. Two of those who dug deeper were famous writers. One was John Updike and the other was Oscar Wilde.

John Updike (March 18, 1932 — January 27, 2009), one of America’s most influential novelists, was preoccupied by the Christian Faith all of his life. Even after going through several religious crises, he always considered himself a Christian. In 1964 he wrote his, now famous, “Seven Stanzas at Easter.” He wrote from the perspective of a Protestant fundamentalist questioning his faith (“if He rose at all”). The Catholic Church teaches the resurrection of Jesus is a real transformative event. However, the Church does not teach that the resurrection was the mere resuscitation of the dead body of Jesus, as Updike seems to want. In that case he would have died again, as Lazarus did. The body of the risen Christ is glorified, a mystery beyond our comprehension. Nor does the Church teach that every detail of the resurrection narratives must be taken literally. The Church acknowledges that the Gospel writers used symbolic language to convey the wonder of the Easter Mystery.

Even though our Catholic understanding of the resurrection is not as literal as Updike’s poem, a personal reflection, or a family discussion about the deeper meaning of his seven stanzas might bring you closer to the meaning of Holy Week and the Sundays of Easter leading up to the Feast of Pentecost (the coming of the Holy Spirit) than an Easter Egg Hunt, or a stanza from Irving Berlin’s “Easter Parade.” Here is Updike’s youthful meditation:

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.
It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.
The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.
The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.
And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.
Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

Oscar Wilde (October 16, 1854 – November 30, 1900), the renowned Irish poet and play-write, was also preoccupied with the Christian Faith, perhaps, in part, because he could not reconcile his troubled personal life with the teachings of Christianity.

Referring to the Anglican Church as “the Protestant Heresy,” Wilde was left speechless after an 1877 audience with Pope Pius IX. He eagerly read John Henry Cardinal Newman’s books and for many years considered becoming a Catholic. He finally concluded that he could not belong to any formal religion. On the appointed day of his baptism, the priest received a bunch of altar lilies, but Wilde never appeared. Nevertheless, all of his life he maintained a serious interest in Catholic theology and liturgy. This may have contributed to the profoundly Catholic understanding of the risen Christ present in the Christian community found in this passage from his 1886 play, “Salomé.”
HEROD: “He raises the dead?”

FIRST NAZARINE: “Yea, sire, He raises the dead.”

HEROD: “I do not wish Him to do that. I forbid him to do that. I allow no man to raise the dead. This Man must be found and told that I forbid Him to raise the dead. Where is This Man at present?”

SECOND NAZARINE: “He is in every place, my lord, but it is hard to find Him.”

Where is This Man Jesus of Nazareth at present? He is in every place. He is in every heart, every home, every neighborhood, every parish, every Bishop, every Priest, every Deacon, every Religious, every member of the Christian Faithful, and every Redeemed Sinner. But, is it easy to find Him on Easter Sunday 2010?

“HAPPY EASTER!”

Bishop Edward K. Braxton
BISHOP OF BELLEVILLE