Easter
Be Not Afraid!
“We are witnesses of all that he did.” --so says St. Peter in the Book of Acts. Today’s first reading is a brief presentation of the case for belief in Jesus Christ, and of the claims made about him by Christians from Peter’s time to our own. But in saying that “we are witnesses” Peter is not merely stating a fact about himself and the other disciples, that they actually saw what happened. He is claiming for himself and for them –and we may claim for ourselves—responsibility for the truth of Christ, and the obligation to proclaim that truth and to live by that truth --base our lives, even bet our lives, on it.
“Think of what is above,” –so says St. Paul writing to the Colossians, and he adds: “not of what is on earth.” St. Paul is not saying we should ignore what is going on around us –far from it. He is saying that without the proper perspective, we will not really understand the significance of anything we see. He invites us to see with the eyes of faith, for as the Church has always taught, faith is itself a kind of seeing. Nobody without faith can, for example, experience a miracle. For those without faith, any experience, no matter how wondrous, can be explained away. The experience of something miraculous can neither instill faith in someone for whom it is lacking, nor can it restore faith to someone who has rejected it. Rather, what a miracle does –what it always does-- is affirm the faith of those who already have it. By saying “think of what is above” Paul is just telling us to keep our eyes open, so that we may see in the truest way possible, and recognize God’s action in our lives, especially when suffering would lead us to give up in despair. Only with the eyes of faith can we know that Easter follows Good Friday; only with the eyes of faith does the Cross of Christ become the Tree of Life; only with the eyes of faith can someone find hope in an empty tomb.
“Be not afraid!” –so says the angel guarding the tomb, as we read in Matthew’s Gospel. But we’ve heard those words before: “Be not afraid” was what the angel said to Mary, and “Be not afraid” were the words of the angel to Joseph. “Be not afraid” were the words with which St. John Paul II began his first proclamation as Pope. If faith is seeing, fear is blindness. All fear is rooted in the fear of death. Our faith commands that we fear only God, but the fear we are commanded to have is not fear in the sense of terror, but is the awe, the holy fear-- we owe to the God who cannot be persuaded, cannot be bought, cannot be tamed. Yet this is also the God who Jesus himself taught us to call our Father, whose love for us –this day we proclaim-- is stronger than death. And this is the God who sends us messengers –angels and prophets and popes—to proclaim to us, when our sight grows dim: “Be not afraid!”
We are called to bear witness, and as we see with the eyes of faith, to bear that witness fearlessly. May our Easter witness, then, unsettle those without faith, that they might open their eyes and begin their journey; and may it strengthen those who have faith already and journey with us, so that we may all one day find our destiny in Christ.