There are no words

There are times in the lives of us all when an experience comes along that stretches us and makes it hard to understand, explain and grasp. Sometimes the experience is beauty and loveliness—for example, the birth of a child. At other times, the event might be terrible, ugly and tragic—as in a fatal auto accident. When we move from such moments and later try to explain to someone what happened, what it was like, we fail.  There simply are no adequate words.

For more than 2,000 years, Christians have tried to put the Easter story into words. The Passion gospel proclaimed during this Holy Week, narrated the story of the Last Supper, the arrest and torture of Jesus and His crucifixion and death. On this Sunday of Easter, we proclaim the story of the empty tomb: Jesus has been raised from death and now lives again.

So it is that we can tell the story, just like we can say that at a certain time and place a precious child was born; and similarly at such and such a time, a terrible and fatal accident occurred. And yet, the narration only tells a part of the story as there is so much more that needs to be conveyed to really begin to understand the event. It is moving beyond the story into the real meaning of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that brings us into the place where we struggle to find the words.

Music, poetry, literature, drama, opera, and art in every form have all sought to lead us into the depths of the Jesus story. Often, all of these most noble of efforts are helpful in lifting us beyond mere words toward a mystery as elusive as it is alluring. For we are seeking to know something of God, the ineffable and omnipotent One, and still, there are no words. Yet the magnitude of the Easter story impels us to seek to understand something!

Our tradition asserts that this broken world, including you and me, with all of the evil, fear, darkness and sadness of our time, has been embraced by the Son of the Living God nailed to a primitive cross to suffer, die, and be buried. And early in the morning of the third day, this same Jesus rose from death, conquering the power of evil and death forevermore. On this first Easter morning, Hope was born. It is not a theoretical and distant Hope, rather one that is available to all.

For it is precisely in the Sacrament of Baptism that a person becomes Christian, connecting in the most intimate way with this Jesus. And on Easter, the Church celebrates this Sacrament by which a person is brought into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

There is a stirring in people, an inner something that longs to grasp this enormous truth for which there are no words. Christ is Risen and in the midst of all the activities of humankind, the joyful and the sad, Hope is present and can never be diminished. To move beyond the story this Eastertime, to let the inadequate words lead us deep into our heart, and to listen to that inner longing for Hope and walk in the promise of Easter is the gift God offers every one of us.

Fr. James Ronan, Pastor

jronan@stmarystcatherine.org