A Reflection for Easter Sunday (Year C).
It is Easter! Jesus is Risen (Mt 28:6) and with us always (Mt 28:20). Through His resurrection, He has overcome evil and death, and He has given us that same victory whenever we tap into the power of His Resurrection. On Holy Saturday, the Office of Readings presented us with an ancient homily about Jesus descending into the realm of the dead to call all who were sleeping in death to awaken and come out of their graves, beginning with Adam. Jesus is the firstborn from the dead (Col 1:18) and He is the one who calls us out of the sleep of death, out of the grave, to rise to new life with Him. Today, we celebrate the Lord who is risen in His power and glory. His grave is empty! He is RISEN! Alleluia!
There is a book by Ernest Gordon entitled Through the Valley of the Kwai. He records the true story of what happened in a Japanese prison camp on the River Kwai during World War II. There, about 12,000 Allied prisoners-of-war (POWs) died from atrocities and starvation during the construction of the railway. The men were forced to work in the worst conditions imaginable, bare-headed and bare-footed and in rags, and in heat that sometimes reached 120° C. They toiled to construct the track bed out of soil and stones, filling up baskets with their bare hands and carrying the heavy loads on their backs. Their only bed was an earthen floor. According to Gordon, the POWs’ worst enemies were not the Japanese, horrendous though the conditions and tortures they inflicted were: it was the prisoners who were their own worst enemies. He asserts that it was fear that prevented prisoners from thinking straight, plus their physical and mental states deteriorated because they were starved. They struggled with each other over food and they stole food from each other. They became distrustful of each other. They betrayed each other to the guards, who were scornful of the POWs sinking so low as to destroy each other. Then something incredible happened. A few prisoners got together and organized a Bible study group for their companions. As they were studying the Gospel, it dawned on them that Jesus was present to them and living in their midst. More than that, they discovered that Jesus understood their situation: like them, He often had no place to lie down at night, He was often hungry, He was often bone-tired, and He was betrayed and abused. Everything about Jesus – who He was, what He said, and what He did – resonated with them, and they began to regain their senses and get their mental balance back. The prisoners stopped seeing themselves merely as victims of cruel circumstance. They stopped betraying each other. They stopped their self-destructive behaviours. The internal change in them became more obvious in their prayers. They began praying for each other – not in a general sense, but in particularizing the prayers for the difficulties each person was facing. The intercessions were focused on fellow-prisoners’ specific needs in order to utilise the new strength they had found in The Lord and in themselves.
Gradually, the camp underwent a change that surprised not only the Japanese guards but also the prisoners themselves. One night, after Gordon had walked back to his cell, something beautiful happened. For the first time since his captivity, he heard a man start singing in his cell. Others joined in from where they were imprisoned in their cells. One of them tapped out a rhythm on a tin can to accompany the melody. The sound of the stick hitting the tin, in combination with the singing of the men, introduced light and life into the darkness. To the prisoners, the disparity between the warmth of the sound of the singing backed by the rhythm of life, over against the chill dread silence of misery in the camp, was as heartening and as revolutionary as the polarity between life and death, as the polarity between death and resurrection.
Acceptance of the news of the Resurrection of Jesus transfuses new life into the story of our personal salvation. A life lived without Christ is a life endured in chains, a life in prison for the soul. Like the prisoners in their former state in Gordon’s report, we may well have found ourselves living daily in fear and anxiety, in sadness of soul, betraying one another and being distrustful of our fraternity in Christ. But the Resurrection of Jesus is a turning point for each one of us, and is the source of resurrection to new life, joy and fulfilment. The Easter message is that of the liberation of everyone constrained by their physical, mental or spiritual circumstances. As Jesus is no longer to be found in the tomb because death could not hold Him, so we too have been liberated from incarceration in whatever our personal ‘graves’ and ‘prisons’ may be – our souls are set free.
The Easter season gives you the ideal opportunity to open your heart to the Risen Lord and to invite Him to change you and give you fullness of life. Easter is the ideal time to let Jesus help you: to help you regain your trust in other people despite having been betrayed, to dare to love again despite having had your love rejected, to hope again despite having had your hopes and expectations repeatedly disappointed, and to pick up the pieces and make a fresh start. Happy Easter!