Since Easter Vigil last night, everyone's greeting to one another has been, "Happy Easter!!" Indeed, Easter calls for the ultimate celebration in the whole liturgical year. It is the peak of our Christian life - the source of our hope and joy, the purpose of our lives - in the resurrection of Jesus, our Lord and Saviour. What meaning is there to our living on this earth if once buried or cremated, our lives reach the final dead end? What meaning is there to our labour and sufferings on earth if not because there is something that lies beyond death - that of eternal life promised to us in Christ Jesus?
Yes, we believe that in the Risen Jesus, we have eternal life; Jesus, by rising from the dead, broke the chains of the underworld and its power over us. He opened the gates of heaven, welcoming us to the eternal life He wants to give us and has won for us by His own suffering and death. By our sins, we are condemned and deserve to suffer in eternal fires but because Jesus has absorbed all our sins and made Himself an offering, a sacrifice to the Father, we have now the gates of heaven opened to us.
Easter will not mean anything beyond the bunnies and eggs. Neither will it go anywhere deeper than just putting "Happy Easter" as a greeting on our lips. In sincere goodwill, we genuinely will of others to experience the joy of Easter and so, we greet them as such. However, more than this, we need to understand where this happiness comes from and we need to be clear about what it means to us personally. How often during Chinese New Year, we enter into a relative's house filled with people and repeat "Happy New Year" to everyone we meet, more often than not, barely meaning it to be a real wishing that the new year be one that is full of happiness and prosperity to the person we are greeting? Perhaps, there is just too many to wish and the good wish becomes diluted to a mere act of respect and courtesy. So it is with "Happy Easter".
At the supermarkets, the Easter eggs were mostly snapped up. Shelves once lined with boxes of Easter eggs laid bare. Everyone, believer or not, seemed to be caught in the whole Easter egg madness probably without even thinking twice about the real significance of "eggs"; that is, the symbol of the new life that Christ bought for us with His life. I had to buy Easter eggs from the Pharmacy, the last place I would think of that sells Easter eggs! I never knew that Easter eggs were a sell-out! But this is another one of the business strategies in the commercialised world we live in, just like at Christmas. Somehow, businesses can turn a holy and sacred religious season into a money-making opportunity.
But the world will do what it likes... what about us? What is Easter to us? If our lives comes to a final end at our death and nothing lies beyond, how would this affect our lives now? What difference does it make to our lives because we now know that our Lord has risen and shows us the opened gates of Paradise that await us? What hope He brings to our lives now that we know all the efforts we put in to live good lives will not lead us to the same end as those who deliberately harm! What hope He brings to us in the knowing that His justice will prevail in the end, that the poor, discriminated, the oppressed, rejected, abandoned, the suffering will be raised and given their due dignity and justice! They will rest in the assurance that they need not suffer any more for all eternity! The evil-doers will get their just punishment. Those who stand in the light will one day be reunited with God our Father, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, Mary and all the angels and saints! We will hear the angels singing and we can praise God along with them. The Paradise that Jesus assured the repentant thief is the Paradise He offers to us. He did not offer it to the unrepentant thief. Likewise, if we want to walk through these gates of heaven in full glory and triumph, we have to learn from the repentant thief - acknowledge Jesus as Lord, acknowledge our sinfulness with humility and remorse, beg God for pardon, make reparation for our sins and sin no more. May our lives mimic that of Christ - one marked by His bringing of the Good News of Salvation to all, suffering and dying to uphold the Truth He came to tell us, and after living out to perfection His Father's Will on earth, rise to eternal life and glory with God the Father. May we one day share with Christ in His eternal happiness and triumph.
Happy and Blessed Easter to all. May God shed the light of His Truth upon the meaning of Easter in our hearts and minds. Amen.
24 April 2011, Sunday
11.54pm
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