By Ryan LeBlanc

Easter is as big as it gets.

The highest feast, the deepest mystery, the most … momentous … moment.

Christ is Risen, and that changes everything. It has to.

So, where do we see this change? How do we experience it?

The whole meaning and purpose of the universe – the general meaning – is defined by the Resurrection.

I don’t know about you, but I struggle to see and experience the particular meaning of this Easter season, in my life, in this place.

Previously, I reflected about how my Lent was going terribly, meaning I was struggling with my lack of holiness. After slogging through some thankless penance, we might say, we become ready for some Easter glory.

Our Triduum celebration of the Paschal Mystery, the Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Vigil liturgy, fills us with beauty and drama. Christ’s betrayal, death and resurrection become visceral and tangible, things which we experience in our senses and our souls.

In the treasury of the Church, powered by the Spirit, what it means to die and rise become real to us.

I thought, maybe, after a shaky Lent, I might come away from Easter a bit more, I don’t know, confident?

That’s the gist, right? Of all the paintings of the Risen Christ stamping his bare foot down on the grave and the skull, waving his medieval banner of victory, walking with a strut straight outta the tomb?

So far, I cannot say I have experienced an “Easter swagger” that my Lord has conquered the world of corruption and secured my eternal bliss. Maybe there are others out there, like me, who wake up on Easter or Christmas morning, and wonder, “What’s really changed?” After a disturbing Lent, I kind of expected my Easter morning to be a bit more… assuring.

Within the liturgy, within the Scriptures, I’m sharply attuned to those characters for whom the immediate experience of the Resurrection is a confusing experience.

At the vigil, for example, Mark’s gospel leaves us with women who “fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement has seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid,” (Mark 16:8b, NRSV).

No swagger there.

How else do the closest and dearest friends of Jesus experience his return from the dead?

Well, they don’t believe the woman who has seen him (Mark 16:11), they skip town (Luke 24:13), they rush to see for themselves but then just gape and stare (John 20:3-10), they sit and cry (John 20:11), they lock themselves in a room (John 20:19), they doubt and challenge him (John 20:25), and my favourite is Peter who fires himself and goes back to his day job, as if the whole Jesus project is over (John 21:3).

No one experiences all of these reactions, but maybe we can see ourselves in those who first experienced Easter – especially if our own experience is awkward, embarrassing or inappropriate. My hunch is that these Resurrection reaction stories teach us exactly this point: there is no suitable human reaction to what Jesus does for us in rising from the dead.

We literally cannot process the fullness of the joy, power, hope and glory that is Jesus Risen. Dumbfounded and freaked out is probably the best most of us can hope for.

Over the course of 50 days of the Easter season, we perhaps can come to grips with it. Take a long walk, do some journalling, chew it over for a while. It’s still incredible, we can still barely believe it, but we can begin to talk about it, begin to recognize the feelings and the possibilities it creates in us.

Two thousand years of being God’s Easter people helps us a great deal, to pray and talk and think and write, until with God’s help we’ve developed liturgy and teaching to help us process it.

But I think that part of processing that most momentous moment includes going back to the awkward and dumbstruck experience. When we look out at and live in a world that’s still broken, still crucified and crucifying, and ask, “What’s really changed?” we sharpen our anticipation for an answer that encompasses everything. When the answer who is a Person stands right before us, both wounded and healed, we only really see him when we have really looked, first at the world as it really is, and then at him as he really is.

There will be cognitive dissonance if we truly encounter the Risen Lord. That’s just what’s going to happen. We will need a minute, or two – or eternity – to wrap our minds around this.

That’s okay, though. He is with us always.

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Ryan LeBlanc is a Teacher Chaplain at E.D. Feehan Catholic High School in Saskatoon and a parishioner at the Cathedral of the Holy Family.

 

Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:VAT-Museum-gobelin-2.jpg