Dear Friends,

                  All Christians love Easter.  And it's not just the flowers.  Or the rousing hymns.  People come to church on Easter Sunday because they know that something remarkable happened that day that has somehow changed everything.  But what exactly did happen?  How are we supposed to make sense of those strange stories from the Gospels that we read on Easter Sunday?  Are we really expected to believe them at face value?  Or are they metaphorical or symbolic narratives that point to Jesus' continuing presence with those who believe in him?  Easter season is for 50 days to Pentecost, whereas, Christmas season is 12 days to Epiphany.

                  John Updike was one of the best writers of the 20th century.  His essays, reviews and short stories appeared regularly in the New Yorker Magazine for decades.  An urbane and sophisticated intellect, he could make a clear statement of his Christian faith without apology or compromise.  His poem "Seven Stanzas for Easter" addresses the modern puzzlement about Easter  with an almost brash audacity.

                                    Make no mistake: if he rose at all

                                    It was as His body;

                                    If the cell's dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit,

                                    The amino acids rekindle,

                                    The Church will fall.

                  In the fourth stanza, Updike rejects the idea that modern people must necessarily resort to a metaphorical explanation of the Resurrection.

                                    Let us not mock God with metaphor,

                                    Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence,

                                    Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded

                                    Credulity of earlier ages:

                                    Let us walk through the door.

                  Updike sees something "monstrous" about the Resurrection.  It is a jarring notion that doesn't sit easily within the modern world view.  It takes a certain audacity to believe it.  For anyone who has heard the biblical witness to the resurrection, it would be odd if they had not at some point asked themselves, "Is this really what Christianity teaches?  Can I accept this?" But that doesn't make it any less true.

                                    Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,

                                    For our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,

                                    Lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed

                                    By the miracle,

                                    And crushed by remonstrance.

                  Let us, as Updike says, "walk through the door" of a robust Easter faith, and rejoice Jesus is risen indeed, and we will be raised with him!!

 

 

Faithfully in the Risen Christ,

                                                     
               Fr. Gary +