The Gift of Believing
“[They] saw and believed. For they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead.” – Jn 20:8-9
Happy Easter, Christ has truly Risen! This is the appropriate greeting on this holy-day. However, some of us may wonder, “With all of the bad news, would Easter come? The rising number of deaths due to COVID-19 has yet to peak. Stay-at-home orders have been extended another month in many US cities. Hardships continue to visit people who are healthcare and essential workers, living in nursing homes, quarantined alone, sheltering in flimsy shacks, homeless, and in prisons.
I cannot help but absorb the anxieties, uncertainties, and sufferings of people around me, people who call for help, people who ask for prayers, people who cry out in loneliness. Like many of you, I share their pain and sorrows. We share the same humanity. We share a solidarity born of suffering.
I also cannot help but remember a surprising gift I received as a pilgrim to Jerusalem eight years ago during an all-night vigil in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. I spent much time praying just outside Jesus’ tomb, looking inside, most likely at the same spot where Mary, Peter, and the beloved disciple stood in today’s Gospel. To be honest, I was dozing off most of the time. Yet, somehow, something was happening within me. A simple and powerful truth took hold of me: Jesus’ resurrection happened at the same place where he was entombed. At the same place where death lays new life arises; where fear treads, love dances; where grief dwells, hope springs; where we struggle, Christ’s peace rests. This paradox is the hallmark of the Christian faith: the place of Jesus’ death is also the place where new life rises; the place where something lesser in us dies, something greater is born.
What I received then remains true now. Believing is a gift we receive, not something we can achieve. The disciples saw an empty tomb and they believed, without yet understanding. The gift of faith helps them pivot from a faith in evidence that says, “I’ll believe it when I see it” to a hope-filled faith that says, “I believe it, then I’ll see it.” For them, hope is more than optimism, wishing good things to come in the future. Rather, it is trusting in the present moment that the Risen Christ is with us, that the power of the one who overcame death is already our gift, transforming evil into good.
While belief is a gift given through faith, learning to recognize signs of hope helps us to better receive grace. Allow me to point out some surprising signs of hope emerging from the pandemic. Because of the lockdown, people in northern India are reacting in awe as they visibly see the Himalayan mountain range 100 miles away for the first time in thirty years. Similarly, typically polluted Los Angeles is seeing some of the cleanest air of any major city in the world. For the first time, California hotels are offering temporary housing to homeless people. Family members are connecting with each other in creative and unprecedented ways. Andrea Bocelli’s Music For Hope can be an artistic experience of grace. Pope Francis’ Urbi et Orbi message and his radical proposal for universal income are “contagions of hope, transmitted from heart to heart.”
Faith and hope are not just gifts we’re called to receive this Easter. They are meant to shape a contagion of grace to be shared. It takes time, for understanding follows believing. It is a blessing that the Easter Season lasts 50 days, giving us opportunities to celebrate the pattern of suffering-death-resurrection revealed in Jesus’ life and uncovered in our own pandemic existence. We are given a season longer than Lent to witness the power of God’s light overcoming darkness.
“Risen One, deepen my belief and trust in your unfailing and transforming promise.”