Pastor's Letter | Easter 2020

Dear St. Joseph Parish Family,
 
Today we celebrate Christ's victory over sin and death. This victory is the center of our faith– the promise that we will inherit eternal life, the promise that the evil of this world will not be final, the promise that the evil in our lives will not have the last word. Because of Christ's victory will have hope of eternal life and eternal happiness, and it should be the motive force of our entire lives.
 
But right now amidst the pandemic it is difficult to feel like there was any victory. We face a plague that has spread throughout the entire world– and to our own community. People are dying, people are scared and anxious about what will happen. Many have lost jobs or are not sure whether they will have a job after this disaster. We face alienation and loneliness as we shelter in place. Zoom is a poor substitute for real interaction! And so too the churches are closed, and we are cut off from the spiritual nourishment they provide. It is a dark time.
 
So what sort of victory did Christ win? He ushered in the kingdom of God. Not an earthly kingdom– He didn't simply assume Caesar's throne and rule the world atop a new political system. He did something far more; He radically remade the world. The fallenness of the world continues– all the marks of the curse of original sin still perdure. There is still plague, war, famine, injustice, suffering, etc. But a new power is also at work remaking everything– God is at work in a new way and heaven is open to us.
 
Before Christ we were powerless in the face of evil. We could either be Stoically indifferent to it all or we could sink into despair. Both options forfeit our own humanity– make us less human as we squash any expectation or hope for what our hearts most truly desire, as we submerge our longings for justice and joy and perfection underneath the cold reality of a fallen world. But that cold reality of evil is not the deepest reality– God's love is, and that divine love has conquered evil. Ever since that first Easter we have a real option in the face of evil– to allow Christ's victory over sin and death to be ours too.
 
Christ did not remove evil from the world, but He gave us a way to cross through it back to God, back to the joy and peace we were made for. That way lies through the cross. Through the cross we are transformed into children of God, transformed into people ready for eternal life in heaven. Christ's victory on Easter creates a new path leading out of the fallenness of this world and into the blessedness of our true homeland– the New Jerusalem, heaven. We can unite the crosses we suffer to Christ's cross and find redemption and salvation.
 
Christ didn't simply create an earthly kingdom because to do so would have been too little. Evil is not just something 'out there,' but something that lies within every human heart. We can see it within ourselves–if we wholly give ourselves to our worse impulses then we can see what we are capable of. The kingdom of God is within each person joined to Christ in baptism. It is not an external, political kingdom but a spiritual realm, the Body of Christ. And within it our hearts are transformed to love with that divine Love by which Christ defeated sin and death. Love is stronger than death.
 
Let us unite ourselves with Christ and His victory this Easter. Let His victory be ours too. Allow Christ to transform our hearts and minds to love as He loves. We do this by uniting our lives to His– the crosses we suffer and the joys we're given. Offer the pain and evil you experience to Christ, as well as giving thanks for the good things you've been given.
 
Read the Gospels this Easter season. They are shorter than you think! (But Mark's the shortest.) Know Christ's life, and let it be your life to. As we grow in holiness, as Christ returns us to spiritual health through His grace, we begin to realize that our lives are recapitulations of His life– we are reliving Christ's life because we are following the trail He blazed. Let us know Christ and thus come to know ourselves. That starts with reading the Gospels and encountering the living God within them.
 
Despite the evils that afflict this world, God is still at work within our hearts, preparing us for eternal life. Evil only finally disappears when Christ returns at the Second Coming; however, we can take part in His victory now through letting His love transform us. Take your place in that victory we celebrate today. Go and be a saint.
 

Have a Blessed Easter,
 
Fr. Boniface Endorf, O.P.