Stories and message

Holy Week and Easter Sunday, our churches were packed. But “this phenomenon is actually misleading," says an earlier survey of 1,300 urban students by Philippine Jesuits. Published in Windhover magazine, the survey found:  “Today, four out of every 10 Filipino teenagers (aged 13-19) do not believe in life beyond death”.

“We’re no longer the nation of believers we are reputed to be," Loyola School of Theology’s Catalino Arevalo, S.J. notes. "Those who believe ‘there is no resurrection’ are majority of the young around us." 

Is the empty Garden tomb meaningful only to those “who comb grey hair?”  Few think of death – and what lies beyond.  And Easter confronts us with two great mysteries, namely:  death and God.

There are many Easter stories, Irish theologian Eamonn Bredin writes in Rediscovering Jesus (Claretian Publications). But there is only one Easter message: "God did not allow Him to be held in death" (Acts 2:24).

After the crucifixion, time and space no longer bind Jesus, Luke and John tell us.  He comes and vanishes, even if doors are shut. Nor do they recognize him immediately.  "He had become another," Fr. Arevalo notes. "I think of that quaint expression people sometimes use in Taglish: You are very another na."

Like many youngsters, the two disciples on the road to Emmaus also saw nothing beyond death. They used the past tense in explaining, to the Stranger who walked with them, how the crucifixion smashed their dreams. “We had hoped…”  Sure, the tomb was empty, as the women claimed. But looking into the eyes of the Stranger, they added: “But him, they did not see.”

Was it because of sadness that they failed to recognize Jesus? asks Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser. In Gethsemane, he told his disciples: "Watch!" They were to learn was what Jesus learned to accept: that there is no other way to new life except through death.                                                   

Jesus accepted that, on his knees, in Gethsemane. But he found his disciples asleep, not out of tiredness but, as Luke tells us, "out of sheer sorrow". They were too depressed to get the lesson. When faced with pain that brings us to our knees in agony, we too fail to grasp the lesson. In our anguish, we move towards human consolation, to replace our crucified dreams.                         .                                      .

“The good news is Jesus finds us on that road,” Fr. Rolheiser said. “Stay with us,” the two disciples tell the Stranger. “It is now towards evening and day is almost done.” And over the meal, “they recognized Him in the breaking of bread"—description of the Eucharist and mass, since Pilate’s time.

The Eucharist embodies the Easter Jesus revealed to us as "Emmanuel," Fr. Arevalo writes. He is "the God who is with us always, fellow wayfarer, companion on life’s journey, friend of all our nights and days…That is why there is such a bond between Easter and the Eucharist."

But only 36 percent of Filipino teenagers believe in the Real Presence, the survey adds. Majority (49 percent) thinks the Host is just a symbol. The rest were uncertain.  Without this bond, will these youngsters, like the women on Easter morning, futilely "seek the living among the dead?"

Some 2500 years before an empty garden tomb burst upon an incredulous world, a man spoke of the resurrection in “words engraved in rock.” Pastor Lino Pantoja wrote.  “We Filipinos use the idiom ‘itaga mo sa bato’ (“Carve it in stone”) to assert our utmost confidence. The “unrecognized prophet of Easter” was Job. And he cried: ‘Oh that my words were engraved in rock forever.’

“They were words of his primitive theology of the resurrection: ‘I know that my Redeemer lives. And in the end, He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God.” (Job 19).

Reduced to ignominy, Job wept that God remained silent to his pleas. Here is the ageless question: Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? Nonetheless, he believed that his Redeemer would come. This is a prophetic insight into the Incarnation, Pantoja says. From historical hindsight, we know that came to pass. 

The malignancy that corroded Job’s skin resigns him to death. Yet, he affirms his bodily resurrection: that he will see his Redeemer personally and physically.  Thus, we learn that pain and suffering are temporary -- even when they lead to death. Neither pain nor death is final. 

“There will also be a reunion with those who have gone ahead of us,” Pastor Pantoja wrote. “On the basis of God’s promise, I look forward to seeing my 18-year old son, who died of a brain tumor in 1989. He will rise again. And so will I.”   

That is the language used by Paul and others in speaking of the Easter appearance. They do not say; "We have seen Jesus again", but "we have seen the Lord and worshipped Him." That experience “brought Peter the Rock out of Simon the betrayer, or a crucified Paul out of a crucifying Saul, or the church of martyrs out of the scattered disciples”, Bredin points out.

Even those who proclaim Easter in their lives – Lorenzo Ruiz, Mother Teresa, or John Paul II – stammer to articulate its meaning. Easter reveals the true face of God, as He is – and mankind, as it could be.  "It nudges us into the newness of God’s future”.*

back to top