by Brett Manero
The Easter season is here: Jesus Christ has risen from the grave, death is conquered, salvation awaits us. And yet, why does life still feel so heavy? For a long time, Easter was my favorite holiday. It feels less intense than Christmas: there’s less pressure to purchase countless gifts, to deal with tricky family dynamics, to have the “perfect” holiday. But with this past Christmas being a wonderful experience, I think I have changed my mind: I now prefer Christmas.
Don’t get me wrong: Easter is a glorious occasion. For various reasons, this past Holy Week felt difficult and altogether heavy. I think it was partly due, ironically, to me feeling pressure to have the “perfect” experience of the Easter Triduum: a blissfully sacred Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday.
But, as history shows us, the idea of a perfect holiday is something of a lie. Holy Week in c. 33 AD was far from perfect. Good Friday was a horrific experience for everyone involved. Thank goodness it is followed by the triumph of Easter Sunday, and the most glorious and outrageous event ever to occur in human history.
Yes, our belief in the Resurrection is outrageous. We believe that a man who had been beaten, scourged (and it was a Roman scourging, which often resulted in death), carried a brutally heavy cross, and been crucified somehow rose from the dead and now lives forever. Such is the claim of Christianity for the past two-thousand years, and this will be the claim until the return of Jesus Christ at some point in the future. St. Paul famously – and in his classic choleric Pauline way – defends the truth of the Resurrection after doubts about it were spreading throughout the first-century Church:
“Now if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied.
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep (1 Corinthians 15:12-20).”
There it is: if there is no Resurrection, there is no Christianity. St. Paul is a trustworthy source for this: the Resurrected Christ appeared to him on the road to Damascus, changing him from his previous ways of killing Christians. Paul had to have had a very real and life-changing meeting with the Resurrected One if he altered his life so drastically.
The Resurrection gives so much hope. We still live in a broken world – look at the news, especially with ongoing conflict in the Middle East, and it is obvious that our world is utterly broken. We still suffer daily. I think of others who, like myself, struggle with mental health. It’s a daily cross that only those of us who have it can understand. But the Resurrection is a daily reminder that God has not abandoned us. We long for and desperately await the Second Coming and the fulfillment of all things, but for the moment, the Resurrection is like a deposit, a promise that the rest of the story – the happy ending – is indeed coming.
The glorious Jewish holiday of Passover is likewise celebrated at this time of year as well. I wish my Jewish friends the most happy and blessed of Passovers. I find it interesting that the historicity of the Passover and the Exodus from Egypt are so often debated, even denied by many historians. If the Resurrection happened, and there is so much evidence – the witness of St. Paul, the Shroud of Turin, the ongoing existence of the Church, the lives of saints, Eucharistic miracles – then so did the Passover and the Exodus, for Easter is the fulfillment of the Passover, the New Passover. God really did liberate His People from slavery in Egypt. If the Resurrection is the cornerstone of Christian faith which is built upon the Jewish faith, then the first Easter – the Passover and Exodus – must be real as well, even if the Egyptians intentionally did not leave much evidence for it.
Whatever state you are in: happy, sad, joyful or depressed, just remember that both the Resurrection and Passover are real. If God liberated an entire nation from the horrors of slavery and raised His Son from the dead, He can save us from our struggles as well.
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