April 19, 2021
Editor’s note: This reflection was originally published on Fr. Mark-David’s Facebook page.
When you wake up first thing in the morning
before you get out of bed,
While you are still warm and comfortable
And the whole day is ahead of you
Do you ever stop and think:
“Let me think about the five worst things
that have happened in my life;
The best way to start this day is to
To think of the worst days I have ever lived?”
Just show of hands, how many do this?
Of course, you don’t.
Tragic times, sad times, failures, death
These are not the things we want to rehearse.
Forgetting, repression, suppression
These are gifts from God to keep these
Pains out of our consciousness.
We want these things as far away from us as possible.
So, what was Jesus thinking when appearing to his disciples
Assuring them he was not a ghost;
That he was truly risen from the dead
not only with scarred hands and feet
but also with an appetite for a McFish;
What was Jesus thinking when he does exactly that?
He rehearses with the disciples all the scriptures that
Point to and remind us of
The reality of his suffering, their betrayal,
His torture, their cowardice
His death, their desertion.
Why did he have to do that?
They had thought of little else for the past three days,
They were locked in the upper room
With all those vivid memories of pain and disappointment.
Why didn’t he just let them get used to the idea
That he was Risen, and enjoy that?
This is why:
Resurrection is for the bad times.
We need to remember the resurrection
When we experience the bad times of our lives-
Because bad times make us believe that there is nothing else-
Just bad times,
Nothing else, just pain,
Nothing else, just failure,
Nothing else, just death
Nothing else, just nothing.
And when we feel this, and we will
-just like Jesus, feel all of this;
When we like Jesus, experience all the pain life can bring
We need to remember that the love of God
raised Jesus from the dead to life that has no end.
Sin has its time and sin has its way even with Jesus
But sin did not win with him
And through his mercy it will not win with us.
Love freely given is never wasted.
We can lose a battle, we can lose a war, we can lose our life
But God will never lose us.
We are in God’s hands now,
His love beats in our heart
And death will not steal us away from God.
People don’t think about the resurrection in good times,
we don’t need to.
But in bad times, if we do not think about the resurrection
The devil is very close to placing our soul in despair,
The devil is very close to losing our soul in loneliness
The devil is very close to teaching our soul
self-hatred and selfishness.
That is why when the Risen Lord Jesus
Jesus appeared to his disciples
He took pains to remind them of all the bad times
So that when bad times happen again
They would remember, it is the resurrection that counts.
There is a second reason why Jesus does all of this:
So that the people who believe in Jesus’ resurrection
Would be witnesses to his resurrection to all the people
Who have bad times, and who do not know
God will not let bad times steal them away from his love.
You and I are those witnesses.
Jesus sent his disciples
And he sends you
to remind people lost in bad times that he is risen from the dead
and he will never leave them alone,
that he will bring them through death into life that has no end.
When people are lost in bad times they need
Someone else, someone who knows
That as real as suffering is, as powerful as pain is,
The love of God is stronger.
It was 35 years five years ago, maybe more,
A young woman came to see me
She had been raped, brutally, at gunpoint.
She suffered all the symptoms one would expect:
Fear, loss of control, anxiety, depression
And some you might not expect:
a sense that she was dirty, forever soiled
somehow to blame
and afraid of her husband who had only been kind to her.
What she knew is that her life, as she knew it was over.
I am a psychologist, so we went through the bad times
Over and over again, looking for some relief
Some healing from a brutal, treacherous act
That killed much of her life.
There were no smooth paths, no easy answers.
While medication and therapy played their part
Change came to her, when she experienced
What today’s scriptures tell us is true:
God was with her, in all her pain, never deserted her,
and in love, would raise her from the dead.
Like the risen Jesus, she too would have scars
In her hands and feet of her memory.
But, the love of God, the Holy Spirit
Who raised Jesus from his death would lift her up,
away from evil, from desperation,
Lift her into a new-if, different-life.
Much later she sent me a card, which I keep.
It is the picture of a mime, in white face,
Carefully, preciously holding a rose.
That, she wrote, is how she learned to believe
God was holding her soul: preciously, carefully.
That is how she came to see her soul, as a rose
Tenderly loved.
That is the power of the resurrection
And I am a witness to it
And so are you.
And when you leave this church
You will meet people living in bad times
Who will need to hear what you can tell them:
That Jesus the Christ is Risen from the dead
And he is bringing them into love that does not end.
Amen.
Paulist Fr. Mark David Janus is president of Paulist Press.