May Christ Easter in You

The Jesuit poet, Gerald Manley Hopkins in his poem, “The Wreck of Deutschland”, describes EASTER as a verb. The poem refers to a tragic event, a shipwreck in 1875 in which five Franciscan nuns on their way from Germany to New York were drowned with others in the freezing waters off the coast. Hopkins in the poem uses the noun Easter both as an action word, something that happens, and a state of being, Easter as happening to us and something that is “in us”.

Of course, Easter is about Jesus Christ rising from the dead. Easter proclaims His victory, the victory of God over death and sin. Easter celebrates the Lord bursting out of the tomb three days after having died on the cross and after having been buried in the tomb.

The intriguing words of the poem, “let Him easter in you”, captures another aspect which is that we share in its mystery and victory. We are not spectators at the death and resurrection of Christ. Easter is not for Christ alone but also for us. Easter is shared with us. To have Him “easter in us”, is to be free of sin and its terrible consequences. It is to live for God.

St. Paul in his letter to the Romans puts it this way: “Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so too we might walk in the newness of life”. (Romans 6:4). St. Paul is talking about baptism as union with the death and resurrection of Christ. In the water of baptism we are joined to the Easter action of God, dying to sin and rising out of the water to life in Christ.

Easter is God’s activity in us through the Holy Spirit. By it we participate in the power and victory of God over death and life. That power offers us new life and a way out of darkness of self and the darkness outside of self. Let the Easter action of God touch your life and show its power in you.

Easter is a verb as the poet describes it well. It is a state of being for us who are in Christ. If affects how we understand ourselves and what happens to us and even to the world. For example, sickness, troubles, the loss of loved ones, unemployment and mess of the world are not death dealing for those who are in Christ.

Pope Francis in his Easter Sunday homily challenges of “eastering” for Christians in these words:

“That is what we are called to do: to experience the risen Christ and to share the experience with others; to roll away the stone from the tomb where we may have enclosed the Lord, in order to spread his joy in the world. Let us make Jesus, the Living One, rise again from all those tombs in which we have sealed Him. Let us set Him free from the narrow cells in which we have so often imprisoned him. Let us awaken from our peaceful slumber and let Him disturb and inconvenience us. Let us bring Him into our everyday lives: through gestures of peace in these days marked by the horrors of war, through acts of reconciliation amid broken relationships, acts of compassion towards those in need, acts of justice amid situations of inequality and of truth in the midst of lies. And above all, through works of love and fraternity.”

May the Lord, the Risen Christ, easter in you!

(Fr. Archimedes Lachica, S.J.)