By Fr. Glenn Jones:

A most blessed Easter day and season to all!

The Easter season, of course, is when Christians rejoice in celebration of Jesus’ resurrection from death, opening the way for His faithful to follow Him to the eternal life for which we are created, and yet may be individually lost through our own refusals to seek good and love of one another rather than selfishness and even evil. While Christians always celebrate the resurrection, the special celebratory season extends all the way to Pentecost, when they will celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles and the Church as described in Acts of the Apostles, chapter 2.

By Jesus’ promise in the Gospels, Christians believe that the Holy Spirit remains with God’s Church thenceforth, guiding it—despite all the faults and foible of fallible humanity—toward the good and, ultimately, to culminate in the final realization and manifestation of God’s universal kingdom. And while many in our cynical humanity will think this just “pie in the sky”, there is just too much evidence for its truth … which anyone can come to realize if only he make the effort to seek it. Even seeking it often leads to faith.

We spend so much time and resources unraveling the secrets of the material world; how much do we try to look into the depths of the spiritual? Of the eternal … into which we all must one day enter? We in the “first world” live far and away better material lives than in any age heretofore, and yet we need only look around and see that we have not progressed spiritually. Still, we have the same wars, the same greed, the same animosities and intolerances of others differing from ourselves. The same ignorance.

But the desire to seek truth is innate in the human soul and psyche, and so never is time searching for truth wasted, and perhaps never has it been more essential for humanity. if we concern ourselves only with this admittedly fascinating but only peripheral shell of the material world, we never begin to plumb the depths of the eternal reality and that which is eternal value. Our eternal origin and destination.

And, alas, this Easter season witnesses yet another war raging—Ukraine, of course. Now we hear stories of depredations and war crimes, digressing from bad to worse to abominable.

But are we ourselves in our own little wars … individually? With some in our family, our workplace, our community? Do we go to church and refuse the sign of peace to someone nearby because of simmering feuds and long-past (often imagined) offenses? Do we smile, and yet await opportunity to plunge the knife of vengeance? As if often said, if we cannot reconcile and lay aside difference with one another, how can we expect nations to do so? As society’s building block is the family, the building block of peace is  amiable relations among individuals, beginning with the essential element of forgiveness.

Thus, for the Christian, the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection at Easter seems a much more essential time for new resolutions than is new year, for at Easter and in the days leading to it, Christians relive the very purpose and goal of Jesus’ work and life—His death and resurrection for the salvation for humanity. Even Jesus’ final words from the cross outline the path which we are called to follow: “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34). If Jesus so forgives those who have nailed Him, have hung Him, are even then mercilessly jeer at Him as He dies slowly in agony, how pathetic is it that we attempt to excuse our own poor behavior toward others?

St. Paul writes: “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead…we too might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:4) and “Put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Ephesians 4:22-24)

And those “lusts” Paul speaks of can take on many forms, not only of sexuality, but of power, wealth, notoriety, vanity, just to name a few … all of them “works of the flesh”, and so we are reminded in another place: “…the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would…” (Galatians 5:17), Paul echoing Jesus: “…evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a man…” (Matthew 15:19-20)

And so, let us make Easter resolutions to renew virtues which are good in themselves, whether one is Christian or no: “…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law.” (Galatians 5:22) For the Easter egg is itself an image of new life and the breaking of the earthly “shell” which keeps us contained and restricted within our own limited and dark world of self-centeredness. But like Jesus bursting forth from the tomb, we, too, are called to break “out of self” into the infinitely larger world of loving God with whole heart, and loving our neighbor as ourselves.

This is one of the reasons for our annual Easter celebrations—to remind us of the source, summit and goal of faith—to emulate and imitate Jesus in His life, and thus follow Him at our eventual stepping through the portal into eternity … in faith and goodness, following Him who is “first-born from the dead.”

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“‘Lord, where are you going?’ Jesus answered, ‘Where I am going you cannot follow me now; but you shall follow afterward…Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms … I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also’…Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.’” (John 13:36 -14:6)

Editor’s note: Rev. Glenn Jones is the Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe and former pastor of Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church in Los Alamos.