Easter: So good it must be true
by Father Francis P. DeSiano, CSP
April 2, 2015

Hurry! Hurry! It’s amazing. It’s here for sale. The greatest oil ever invented. Just one little drop in your coffee or tea, and it will cure everything. Digestive ills, cholesterol, clogged arteries, even your problems with compulsive eating. Just one little drop. Come! Buy your bottles of the great oil ever invented. Only $5.95 … but wait, if you act right now …

We hear it all the time: Never fall for the offer that’s too good to be true. A 60-inch LED TV for $99, car insurance for as little as $25 a month, the Brooklyn Bridge for $1,000. No sir, we are not going to fall for that! We’ve been around that track. You get what you pay for. Nobody gets something for nothing. Or almost nothing.

So what do we make of this glorious morning, Easter, when the Lord rises, his burial cloths thrown around the tomb and the rock pushed back by some unearthly power? Do we roll our eyes? Do we just say it’s too good to be true? Or do we accept the heavenly message we are given this day: this is the exact Good News we’ve been waiting for. It’s so Good it must be true. 

Because we’ve adjusted our horizons, haven’t we? If we have a comfortable life, not too much pain, enough money to get what we need and have a great vacation every year, isn’t that plenty? All the good we expect for ourselves is a minimum of pain and the most pleasure we can sustain without getting hurt. If we should win the lottery, are selected for some outstanding position or somehow live beyond 100 with excellent health – why that itself would floor us. Who needs this rising from the dead? Why even bring that up?

Yet that’s what God brings up, every year, after the tomb is sealed and we’ve dried our Good Friday tears. God brings us to this empty tomb, to the message of angelic creatures and to men and women startled, excited, confused – but now profoundly changed. Because God thinks more of us than we think of ourselves. God has not adjusted the horizons. God has not settled for us getting through our 80 or 90 years with a minimum of pain. 

That’s what our shrunken souls lead us to, the thought that death takes away any pain we have, so why not stop at that? Thank God Jesus died after only 3 or 6 hours on that terrible cross. Amen. It’s over. Let’s take him down from the cross and breathe sighs of relief. 

But this God who has called us out of nothingness, given us the ability to looked outward to all creation and inward into the bottom of our souls; who has packed us with dreams, hopes, and loves that are always pushing back time, and resisting death’s doom. This God who has built “forever” into our very fabric, this God shows us something so good it must be true. He shows us not only a Risen Christ, brimming with Spirit to pour upon us, he shows us the resurrection of all our hopes, all our loves, all our visions for the best.

So let’s embrace each other this morning. Let’s look into the eyes of those we love. Let’s hold the hands of aged and the young. Let’s accept the hints of glory in the ordinariness of our lives. Let’s admit the truth that, in the end, we mean everything ­ to God, to creation, and to each other. Let’s sing the song angels and earth sing this day, the Alleluia that begins as a little hum from an empty tomb, but proceeds, more glorious than any symphony, to change human history. Let’s sing the Alleluia that has no end.

Easter – it’s so good it must be true, and so true it is the foundation of all good.