The Resurrection of the Lord
(Easter morning)
April 5, 2015

     One of the last literary efforts of the late great English novelist, Graham Greene, is a novel called Monsignor Quixote. It's a delightful story about a priest, a loveable sort of priest, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, wonderfully naive, innocent yet shrewd, human and saintly -- a man altogether worthy of bearing the name of Cervantes' great hero.

     At one point of the story, Msgr. Quixote has a remarkable dream in which Christ is saved from death on the cross by legions of angels which the devil on an earlier occasion had told him he could appeal to if he wanted. So there was no final agony for Jesus, no rushed burial in a borrowed tomb, no heavy stone to seal it, no empty tomb.

     In his dream, Msgr. Quixote stood there watching on Calvary as Jesus stepped triumphantly down from the cross.  The Roman soldiers fell to their knees.  The people of Jerusalem poured out the city gates and up the hill to worship him.  His mother smiled through tears of joy.  His disciples clustered around him, deliriously happy.

     A grand spectacle it was without an ounce of ambiguity: no room for pain, no room for doubt and, of course, no room for faith!  Msgr. Quixote and all those bystanders knew with mathematical certainty that Jesus was indeed the Son of God.

     When he awakened from his dream, Monsignor Quixote found himself praying, "Lord, save me from such a belief!"

     Now, we can probably all agree that a world without doubt or pain -- a world without suffering, sorrow and death -- would be a very attractive world.  But its attractiveness would be beguiling.  Like Msgr. Quixote's dream, a world with no surprise or mystery, no need for faith or hope, no place for risking or reaching, would be a world filled with spiritual and moral adolescents, because, as you know, tragedy not only tests us humans, it also tempers us; suffering not only saddens, it also strengthens; death not only devastates, it also delivers.

     That's the heart of the mystery we celebrate on Easter.  But take courage, my friends:  it was a mystery first of all for Jesus who prayed to escape suffering:  prayed with every fiber of his being that the cup of suffering might pass him by.  And it was also a mystery for his disciples who literally ran from suffering in that dark moment when they deserted their friend among the twisted trees of Gethsemane and ran for cover.

     If I may say so, thank God they did!  How else could we ever claim a place among the followers and friends of Jesus?

     Lucky for us, we have these cowardly disciples of Jesus who did exactly what we would have done.  I find that reassuring.  True, there were a few among them with courage –- mostly women, by the way -- who stood by him and dared to venture forth to the tomb on that Easter morning.  But even those brave women thought it was all over.  And, again, all I can say is thank God!

     Thank God because there is hope for us who find it hard to be hopeful when so much of what we see in the world around us raises huge questions about a good and loving God and about the meaning of human existence.  Think of the senseless suffering of little children; think of the starvation of billions while millions grow fat; think of the systematic violence visited on innocent people whose only ‘sin’ is the color of their skin, or their religion, or the place where they happened to be born.

     There is so much wrong in our world, so much tragedy, so much violence, and always there is death:  the death of the innocent, the death of a loved one and, yes, our own death, too.

     My friends in Christ, our experience is not unlike the experience of the disciples of Jesus.  Easter came to them only after they had experienced the most profound disillusionment and had come face-to-face with death.  They who had risked everything to follow Jesus woke up Easter morning convinced that having risked all they had lost all.

     But in the midst of all their pain and loss of hope, Jesus came to them -- the risen Jesus -- and the work he spoke to them was “Peace!” 

     Thank God for all this!  Thank God because it can be the same for you and me.  What we must do is stop trying to escape our personal struggles, our limitations, our failures; stop trying to anesthetize ourselves against everything in life that is painful (and how many ways we have of doing that -- from alcohol to drugs to overwork, from compulsive buying to the dishonest and manipulative relationships we get ourselves into!).  What we must do is stop running from our pain and allow Jesus to be with us in the midst of our pain, our anger, our loneliness.  And if we do -- even if we only take a small step in this direction and maybe that’s all we can do -- it will be for us as it was for the disciples of Jesus.  Jesus will surprise us as he surprised his frightened friends on Easter morning:  "Peace be with you," he will say to us. "Do not be afraid!  I have risen. I am still with you!"

     My friends in Christ, there is certainty to all this, but it is the certainty of faith not the certainty of mathematics, and there are no shortcuts to it that I know of. Msgr. Quixote's dream would have been the ultimate shortcut for Jesus and so he said, "Lord, save me from such a belief!" And I say, Lord, save us from such a belief!

     May our celebration of Easter this year take us beyond the search for shortcuts right to whatever cross we are trying to escape.  That cross can be for us as it was for Jesus: a crossroads not a dead end -- the path to life -- life beyond Msgr. Quixote’s wildest dreams, and beyond ours as well!

     Father Michael G. Ryan