During the first half of the 20th century, there emerged an extraordinary constellation of English Catholic writers, many of them converts, who had the great gift of being able to explicate the Catholic faith on a popular level without watering it down. Names like Chesterton, Knox, Sheed (originally from Australia), and Houselander come to mind.
Among these was a Jesuit priest named C.C. Martindale, who, after having spent five years of internment under the Nazis, was asked by the BBC to deliver six talks on radio during Holy Week of 1946. Father Martindale ended his first talk with these words:
whether it be the problems set by long history or by the present hour, whether it be the problems set by our own soul and our inner experience, whether it be the Sufferings and Death of Christ – the Christian has but one starting point, that is to say God, His Love, and His will that we should live. This truth never changes, however much we may change. God wishes not the death even of the sinner, but that he should live. I cannot say it too often, nor too emphatically. . .that at the origin of all things, during all things, and at the end of all things are God, and Love, and Life.
Fr. Martindale was able to say those words, even after having endured the horrors of war and prison, because he had assimilated and made his own the bright, shining message of Easter. It was this message that helped transform the cringing apostle Peter into the courageous and forceful preacher we meet in the Acts of the Apostles. It was this message that prompted Paul to write to the Colossians, “If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above,” and “you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”
Paul understood that Christ hadn’t risen from the dead just for Himself but for us, that united to Him, we might already begin to rise with Him. Our feet might be mired in the grime of earth, but our heads and hearts are with Christ in Heaven. What had Peter, what had Paul to fear on earth when already they shared in the risen life of Christ?
When Mary Magdalene, Peter, and John found the tomb empty on Easter morning, Christ’s burial clothes still lying there, the Gospel tells us that John believed, but also that “they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.”
John believed that Jesus was risen but did not yet fully comprehend all that was implied in the monumental fact of the resurrection. Understanding would come, however, and the only apostle to escape violent martyrdom would spend sixty more years on earth preaching the God who is love and who wants us to have life to the full, not only now, but forever.
The message of Easter is not that there will be no more crosses but that all our crosses, even death, can lead to new and eternal life, an eternal life begun here and now by our union with the risen Lord. We are like divers in those old movies, who are lowered into the sea from a ship, “strangers in a strange land,” surrounded by darkness, but all the while receiving life from above, our share in the risen life of Christ.
Easter must be for us what it was for Peter, Paul, Mary Magdalene, and all the saints, not just something we believe once happened and will someday benefit us. It is that but so much more. It is a present reality, something we share in here and now. Let the world do its worst. It can never do worse than to kill the Son of God, and we know what came of that. And we share in His life.
We are all familiar with the expression “Rise and shine.” It can, of course, be just an annoying cliché or the interruption of a good night’s sleep. But for Christians, it can be a reminder that, sharing in Christ’s life, we have already begun to rise and must manifest that by radiating Christ’s light and life and love in all we do.
Remember the words of Fr. Martindale: “at the origin of all things, during all things, at the end of all things, are God, and Love, and Life.” Easter calls us, by the way we live, to make it easier for others to believe and experience that. In a world so full of darkness and despair, conflict and confusion, with so many, especially young people, hungering and thirsting for meaning and hope, it is our moral imperative to be Easter people in season and out. We simply cannot afford to hide our light, the light of Christ, under a bushel basket.
