An Easter Message

It was the sheer enthusiasm and commitment of the earliest Christians that drew people to join them in such large numbers.  We see this during Eastertide especially clearly, because we read through the Acts of the Apostles at Mass on the Sundays and weekdays of this most special season.  People were drawn by the preaching and proclamation of the apostles – those same apostles who had hidden themselves away fearful that they, too, might be made to suffer for their faith in Christ; those same apostles who must have felt shattered and let down at the ultimate failure of Jesus’ earthly life, as they would no doubt have seen it at the time of his crucifixion.  St Luke tells us, in the Acts, that on the strength of Peter’s preaching to the Jews ‘on the day of Pentecost’ that they ‘must repent’ and ‘be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of [their]sins’  on ‘that very day, about three thousand were added to their number’ (Acts chapter 2, read at Mass on Tuesday of the Easter Octave).

I sometimes wonder what would be the effect if we and Christians more generally could display this kind of boldness and confidence today.  I wonder whether the reason why the Church in the West is declining numerically is because we do not actually believe firmly and fervently enough.  What is our attitude to Jesus and his saving work?  Do we believe that he is the incarnate Son of God who, having been put to death, was raised bodily to new and eternal life for the forgiveness of sins and so as to be able to open up to us the fullness of life?  Do we really believe this?

If you stop and think about the central Gospel claims, which I’ve just set out, it’s hard to see how we can be lukewarm or indifferent to them.  There is no halfway house.  Either these claims are true, or they are a grotesque delusion which have led many people down the ages and across the world to what could only be described as pointless deaths.  Here is what the well-known Christian writer, C.S Lewis wrote on this theme, back in 1952:

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic…or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to (Mere Christianity).

With all good wishes and prayers for a joyful fifty days of Eastertide. 

A Message for Holy Week and Easter

We are about to celebrate the very heart of our faith as we reach Holy Week and Easter.  The liturgies of Holy Week make present the events that redeemed us and which make it possible for us to lay hold of the gift of everlasting life.  We follow the events through as companions of Christ.  

Sometimes, we might wonder why Jesus had to suffer and die; and, indeed, God could of course have chosen to redeem us by some other means.  But the reason Jesus suffered and died is because that is what people did to him.  He accepted upon himself all that the world could possibly do to him and, in doing so, showed us that love is stronger than death and will always triumph over it.  But, yes, God could have redeemed us without all that.  He could, presumably, have forgiven us for our own sins and the sins of the world and simply bestowed eternal life upon us automatically.  But that would have rendered us powerless; we would have been reduced to a kind of robotic status; and that would have offended against the genuine free will with which God had endowed us in the first place. It would have rendered us incapable of making a loving response to him.

The medieval theologians made a helpful distinction between God’s absolute power (potentia absoluta), the power he could exercise; and his ordered power (potentia ordinata), the power he chooses to exercise.  This distinction helps us to see that, whilst God could have redeemed us any way he chose, he chose to do so by freely limiting the power he exercises.  This latter way was essential if our freedom to act is to be honoured.  Whilst this means that bad things can happen in the world, our freedom is safeguarded and we can therefore enter (freely) into a loving relationship with him and which has salvation as its proper end.

So, God’s exercise of his potentia ordinata meant that Christ might suffer the Passion and that God would choose to redeem us through the infinitely more difficult and costly way of love, inviting (not forcing) people of every time and place to respond to Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection freely and taking hold of the gift he offers.

We might say, then, that a world in which bad things can and do happen is the best of all possible worlds; since the alternative is a world in which we have no freedom at all.  And, of course, bad things do happen.  Just last month, 49 people lost their lives in a terror attack in New Zealand.  Many more people have been left bereaved or injured.  The attacker was a far-right, Hitler-admiring extremist who hated Muslims and anyone whom he perceived to be somehow ‘other’ than himself.  His psychological make-up is very similar to that of the Islamic extremists we hear about.  What they have in common is a sense that they are absolutely right, and that there is no doubt whatsoever as to the justness of their cause.  Only someone with such a mindset can become a murderous terrorist or a suicide bomber.  Thankfully, the vast majority of people, even those with very strong convictions - be those convictions political or religious - are balanced enough to see that others have insights to offer and that we can learn from those others through a healthy interchange with them.

So as we prepare for Holy Week and Easter, pray for those who have suffered as a result of terrorism, pray for the conversion of the hearts of terrorists and extremists of any kind; and pray that, as we celebrate the heart of our faith, others may be moved to make a free and loving response to the God who chooses to honour our freedom by merely inviting us to respond to him.  The message of Easter is that, no matter what happens here and now and no matter what our sufferings, his love will always triumph.