Easter: Has it made a difference?
Rewak, William J.
EASTER: HAS IT WILLIAM J. REWAK MADE A DIFFERENCE? THE EVIDENCE IS MIXED uring this Easter season, we celebrate the heart of Christianity: the victory of life over death, the resolution of...
...Are we liberated or not...
...Who is not a victim...
...For there is much about the organizational church that is still too pharisaical...
...Yes, I believe there are...
...Death will happen, and it will continue to defy faith...
...The catechism answer is that, with faith, we know that Christ did rise but that final victory and power will come after death—just as it did for Jesus—when evil will be punished and WILLIAM J. REWAK, S.J., is the president of Spring Hill College in good rewarded...
...It should burn through creation and make things new...
...And yet Christ, we believe, became a victim precisely to free us from that servitude...
...That may be too flippant, for the eschatological state of mind is certainly a valid one...
...on the other hand, Jesus himself said that no sign shall be given except that of Jonah—the coming to life of someone believed dead...
...But we must remember, lest we expect an enlightened Lazarus around every corner, that though the green of spring may startle us with hope, there is no definitive spring this side of the world's grave...
...Archbishop Oscar Romero, assassinated as he prays the healing words of the Eucharist, seems the quintessence of that strange co-incidence of suffering and glory that periodically in our history echoes the events of Holy Week...
...Someone has to lead and be a burning witness for the rest of us...
...Legitimacy does not render faith easy, but no one has ever said it would be...
...These people, as part of the institutional church, legitimize the church...
...If the Resurrection justified the suffering of the cross, ought we not to see how suffering has changed...
...My faith in Jesus springs, in other words, from contemplating the church as a family of travelers, searching for understanding, praying for faith, rejoicing in an illumination however brief, risking life in those moments when not to risk it would be to lose everything...
...That alternative has, traditionally, been a life after death...
...Something finally has to burst in from the outside, as it did, once, on Easter morning...
...Because he rose, we know—we believe—that we will...
...they are not conclusive...
...If God somehow burst into history, ought we not to see the scars...
...Death is obviously the end of one's existence in the world as we know it...
...I think of a moment, once, when I stood backstage with Mother Teresa after she had just spoken to a huge crowd about a man who had crawled to her home in Calcutta to die so that he would not be lost in an alleyway (she is filled with stories of suffering and of human indomitability...
...It needs signs...
...When Jesus healed the sick, he was manifesting a human compassion, but he was also giving a sign so that those who followed him could begin to understand him...
...The simplicity of her statement, the intensity of it, and the unblinking humility of her eyes: these are signs...
...Indeed, it operates sometimes as if it doubts his presence and must compensate by creating a system of overbearing jurisdiction...
...Is the church itself one of the signs of the Resurrection...
...If we could, we would not need faith...
...It may be too soon to say that history has or has not been changed, or that it will change...
...We should not be pharisaical and demand signs...
...No magic structure—religious, economic, or political—will be discovered to compensate for the stubbornness of evil...
...For the calendar reminds us to celebrate salvation, but experience tells us that the history of humanity is increasingly the history of victimization...
...Teach them that is all they need to do—love God...
...Individual churchmen are, certainly...
...We are all victims of our addictions and we all suffer from our misuse of the environment...
...Paul—the Resurrection is a non-event, and Christianity is a sham...
...Given the historical reality of our mutual inhumanity, it seems reasonable and proper that any religion worth its salt should offer hope...
...As one who was captured by the faith in which the church lives, he witnessed to the church's legitimacy and its perdurance...
...Faith is a grace in itself: we cannot, by definition, prove the object of faith...
...Children are victims of violence and pornography...
...whole races are victims of prejudice and expediency...
...the living unborn who, it seems, have no rights, are victims of convenience and of those who insist on their own rights...
...The Resurrection of Jesus speaks to that hope...
...We should be honest and admit that as an institution it is not always an overpowering sign of Jesus' presence...
...What difference has it made in history...
...And organizations need instrumentality: offices and cars and paper and fax machines...
...Something is incomplete...
...A better show is around the corner...
...She turned to me and said, "Teach the students to love God...
...q 14: 24 April 1992 Commonweal...
...When we look around at the events we experience or the people we know, we must ask ourselves, "What in my life helps me to believe that Jesus is here, that the power of his risen presence is pressing down on us, lifting us up...
...I speak, of course, as a Christian with faith, but also as a benevolent skeptic who would like to find, as Mary Magdalene did, that something is very different on this Easter morning...
...That is what we believe in faith...
...But the church, because it is administered by human beings, suffers from the same faults as does any other organization: it can easily lose itself in structure and forget the fire at its heart...
...It depends on those small steps, sometimes unnoticeable in history, that inch toward healing...
...any faith that wants to be taken seriously must therefore offer some alternative to personal annihilation...
...But faith does need encouragement...
...But perhaps it can be said that the moments of grace have increased...
...THE EVIDENCE IS MIXED uring this Easter season, we celebrate the heart of Christianity: the victory of life over death, the resolution of suffering in the healing power of the risen Lord...
...But if it were not for people like him, the visible institutional church would have a hard time convincing humanity of its sacred character (we can be awed by the bowing and protocol, by fine cloth of gold and magnificent, frescoed hallways, but that sort of awe is ephemeral...
...It is much too concerned about position and place, about control...
...Much of the history of the organizational church is too embarrassing to be seriously considered a sign of Jesus' presence: schism, jealousies, debilitating wealth, murder in the name of religion, a harsh domination of people's consciences...
...These people, as part of the institutional church, as the embers that keep it burning, legitimize the church...
...Has the grace of the Resurrection made any advance on the shore of our stubbornness...
...That fire is all...
...He knew the risks, he understood the threats, but he valued his people's needs more than his life...
...Sometimes it has seemed that his presence is known only by indirection: we say to ourselves, "Jesus has to be here, it would never have lasted this long otherwise...
...So suffering remains...
...An acceptable, eschatological answer: things will iron themselves out later, so put up with victimization now...
...it depends too much on rules...
...For what has it accomplished...
...what we seek is the awe-full majesty of a God who walks in humility...
...All we can definitely point to are those signs of humility, the signs of reaching that tell us some one of the travelers has touched a life different from what the world knew before Jesus and that such a touching gives us reason to hope that the desire for a better history is not in vain...
...As the effective power of grace, it is far more than a sign, but should we not see that effective power, in some way, acting as a sign of the Lord's presence among us...
...Such hope is well-nigh universal...
...But that is all right, for it is reasonable to accept that faith will fill in the picture, and that faith even changes its entire perspective...
...The Resurrection is, therefore, a sign...
...My faith depends on those moments when an inner eye sees more than what I can touch...
...Christianity exists only because of the Resurrection...
...So while it may seem simplistic, while it may appear to be begging the Commonweal 24 April 1992: 11 question, the counsel that we must finally submit to faith—that the Resurrection is ultimately a matter of personal belief—is quite legitimate...
...At every major Christian moment in the calendar, this question seems to stand in relief...
...She and her nuns are signs, when they lift the children from the gutters, when they wash the dying, of the remarkable co-incidence of suffering and glory—of death and honor—that reflects the power of the cross and the Resurrection...
...So I admit to myself that any signs are dim...
...Violence has not lessened since that first Easter...
...We would like the whole world to surge with the power of the light that broke through the stone that Easter morning, but, for some reason, it does not do that...
...the first world is a victim of wealth and the other worlds are victims of poverty and illiteracy...
...An obvious proposition, but it is necessary to remind ourselves of that because if suffering and death have in no way been defeated, then—to paraphrase St...
...And such a sacrifice does not spring from pride, from self-aggrandizement...
...Commonweal 24 April 1992: 13 I believe strongly in the institutional church, for we all need to be taught, we need road signals, we need consensus...
...When two people stand together before God and vow to love one another for as long as they shall live, with all the seriousness and hope they can muster, they are living the primal commandment, "Love God, love your neighbor," in as complete a fashion as they are capable of...
...And it is fraternal: if we do not all recognize we are one family under God, we at least know we are socially and economically interdependent...
...And who does not victimize...
...However, the problem lies in our perception that such power and grace, exploding into our world on Easter morning, has made little appreciable effect on our world, and that in order to justify our faith we must relegate the effect of that power and grace to the next world...
...The human does reflect the power of grace...
...In spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, grace does have a foothold...
...If the Resurrection is truly liberation and victory, why are Christians—let alone the rest of humanity—still locked in primitive prisons of sin and prejudice and fraternal homicide...
...But—at moments—it bums...
...Victimization will not end...
...But a persistent difficulty presents itself: if the cross can be considered a "scandal," how much more the Resurrection...
...And of a Jesuit priest, Rutilio Grande, who several years ago on his way to say Mass in a small village in El Savador was ambushed and murdered...
...I think of a woman, in a small suburban parish church, almost bent double in pain, who yet experienced real joy—you could see it—when she approached for Communion...
...But indirection is not a sign to be proud of...
...it does not trust enough in the power of the risen Lord...
...At times the fire is smothered...
...When love is expressed that way, within an awareness that life is uncertain, we must surely know that God loves us...
...I think of an old man—with brows and chin like mine—who lies inertly, strapped to his bed, uncertain of the time, who with difficulty turns his head to ask, "Are we there yet...
...Law—the structure of how we should do things legitimately—is necessary for human life and an indispensable part of any effective organization...
...There is no doubt they love those to whom they minister, and that the love of God is present...
...it springs from humility that, in itself, is a sign...
...Are there any signs at all...
Vol. 119 • April 1992 • No. 8
