If Christ has not been raised, then empty is our preaching; empty, too, your faith. (1 Cor 15:14) Happy Easter, sisters and brothers!
Greeting each other for Easter is a tradition that does not end on Easter Sunday; rather, it is extended throughout the fifty days of the Easter season which the church celebrates as one day.
That is why, throughout this time, in the liturgy of the church, we constantly repeat the old exclamation of faith “Alleluia!”, which comes from the ancient Hebrew Hallalûyah, which can be translated “Praise God!” or “Glory to God!”
The joy of Easter, in fact, is unlike any other. On no other feast day of the year do we Christians celebrate the Lord Jesus’ absolute unparalleled triumph over evil, sin and death. The evil in the world, the worst we can know or imagine, now has an alternative, a solution: the infinite of love of God, who so loved us that he gave himself for us, finally triumphing with his resurrection.
With this victory, the Lord renews us in the purpose of our lives, which is praising God. And when proclaiming the Alleluia this Easter season, we Christians are renewed in that vocation of praising the Lord without ceasing, with our whole lives.
This Easter season, therefore, is a good time to ask ourselves the question that I recently asked in my Pastoral Letter, “How often do we think about this?”
In fact, “we have a lot of responsibilities in our families, in our job, where we live and in our communities, but the real reason we are here is to glorify God.” (“You Will Be My Witnesses”)
I am still convinced that we should praise God every day of our lives, in the midst of all the things we do and that fill up our days: we praise God for the blessings that have been shed on us; for the gift of life, the gift of faith and the promise of eternal life. All of these are realities that are made especially evident during the Easter season.
But praising God, as I explained in my Pastoral Letter, is not limited to mere gestures or prayers. They are important, but not enough.
Now more than ever “we need Catholics who are living their faith and proclaiming it in each profession and lifestyle. Through you, we can take the truths of the Gospel to every corner of our culture: to the art world, to politics, to the media; to the business world, to science and to technological research; and even to the fields of sports and popular entertainment.” (“You Will Be My Witnesses”)
Given that at Easter we have experienced the good news in our own lives, this is the most favorable time — if there is any special time in the lives of the baptized — to preach the Gospel to others. Now that our hearts have been converted, we can lead other hearts to conversion.
We certainly need to always pray for the grace of a new, profound, life-changing conversion. “Conversion,” as I said in my Pastoral Letter, “is not something that only happens once in our lives; every day we have to make a new effort to again return our hearts to the Lord.”
But we need to remember what the Easter season means for our Christian vocation: “when we re-read the New Testament accounts of the first Easter, we find a common theme: everyone who comes into contact with the risen Lord, comes from that encounter with an imminent desire to run and tell others what he or she has witnessed. Mary Magdalene and the women at the empty tomb now tell us: go “quickly and tell… ‘he has been raised from the dead.’”
Then this is a time of deep joy, of spiritual celebration for the Lord’s victory. And for that same reason, it is the right time to give witness — with our lives and by announcing directly — of the salvation that the world yearns for, which is only found in Jesus Christ.
In the risen Lord, I wish you, with all my heart, a Happy Easter, and I pray that our church in San Antonio, renewed with Easter joy, will grow in its mission as an evangelizing community that does not cease to fulfill its historic destiny of being the source of the announcement of the Gospel for our nation.