God has not finished loving us yet …
“He saw and believed. For they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.” – Jn 20:8-9
Today we celebrate the heart of our faith: the Resurrection of Jesus, the power of God’s love at work now.
On Good Friday, four of us Catholic clergy were allowed a brief visit to the ICE detention processing area in downtown Los Angeles. There was only time for a simple Communion Service. We could not ask questions or hear the stories of the five detainees who joined us. Yet in their faces I caught a glimpse of what Peter and John may have felt as they ran to the tomb that first Easter morning: confusion, fear, and a small flame of hope.
Peter and John did not encounter the risen Jesus at first. They encountered an empty tomb. Yet that was enough to stir hope. They believed before they understood. They began to see that Jesus’ story had not ended in defeat, that the cross was not the end, that God’s love was stronger than what had seemed final.
And that changed everything. Once they began to believe that Jesus’ story had changed, as he had promised, their own stories began to change too. They became more than followers of a crucified teacher. They became witnesses of the living Lord. They were no longer men defined by Good Friday. They became people sent by Easter.
That is Easter faith. It does not begin when everything is clear. It begins when, in the midst of confusion and fear, hope flickers to life. The empty tomb tells us that what looked finished was not finished. What looked sealed was not sealed forever. Fear, injustice, and death do not get the last word.
As we shook hands and said goodbye on Friday, I felt a similar hope rising anew in my own heart. The hope I saw in the eyes of the detained men moved me. I found myself asking for the grace to believe before I could understand.
And perhaps that is the invitation for all of us. We do not need to understand everything at once. We begin by trusting that God is at work where the world sees only endings. With the Risen One, what seems over is not over. The headlines may suggest that corruption, cruelty, and injustice are winning, but they are not the end of the story. Nor are your story and mine. God has not finished loving us yet.
The Resurrection is the power of God’s love to change our stories and our lives, now.
Where in my life have I decided that a story is over? What would it mean to let the Risen One meet me there?
Tri Dinh, SJ