Happy Easter
March 31, 2024
The Lord is Risen! He is truly Risen ~ Alleluia!
Because of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, the human race has hope for the future, and redemption in the sufferings of the present. If we didn’t know anything about the hope of heaven, and a life of perfect everlasting happiness within it, we’d despair of the present. With the suffering, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ (the Paschal Mystery), heaven has been opened to those who will be His faithful disciples. That means for a Catholic Christian, life doesn’t have to be lived in vain, but with incredible purpose, and with an interior peace that comes with accompanying Christ—a peace the world cannot give.
The past six months have been a very difficult stretch for me, with the last three months being downright miserable. Yet, united to Jesus, all of our sacrifices and suffering can be put to really good use and ultimately glorified. Here’s why:
When Jesus entered the Garden of Gethsemane on the night He was arrested, His suffering began. Jesus Christ suffered more from the evening of Holy Thursday in the Garden of Gethsemane to His death on Calvary at 3pm on Good Friday than any being ever has (human, angel, or otherwise). Because He is God, He was able to take onto Himself all the sins of all people of all time, and all the suffering of all people of all time without instantly dying. And what good did all that immense suffering and His death do? It made our salvation, immortal life in heaven, possible. That suffering made the eternal happiness of innumerable people like you and me possible.
So, what about our suffering, does it do any good? Because of Jesus’ sacrifice, our suffering, offered to God as a sacrifice, does immense good too. Knowing this while we are suffering, gives us a chance to give to God our own sacrifice for some unforeseen good. To offer God our suffering as a sacrifice is itself a grace from God, the fruit of which we will not know the full extent of until the next life. But it is true! Our suffering given to Our Lord, just like His did for us, does immense good. Recognizing that is a great consolation and a powerful means of persevering through our own Calvaries. Know that somehow, somewhere, someone is experiencing an Easter, a Resurrection, a salvation, because you and I are willing to offer to God our trials, our tears, our Gethsamenes and Calvaries. What an amazing thing! What a consolation.
There is one other amazing grace I want to share with you that our suffering, offered to God, makes possible, especially when it is particularly bad—our own holiness. No sum can value its worth.
Our starting point for eternal happiness in heaven will be the state of our soul at the end point of this life. The extent to which we can grow in the Divine Will in this life and be sanctified, has a direct bearing on the good we can do for others in this life, and our everlasting happiness in the next.
So, getting back to my difficult state in these past six months. It has been a time of great graces, as hard as they have been to come by, both for other causes unknown to me, and for my own personal growth in holiness. Dear Jesus, don’t let me waste those graces.
All this has been made possible because of what Jesus Christ suffered for us, culminating in His Resurrection and ours too. This Easter, even if exhausted and dinged up, I am profoundly grateful for the chance to have done good somehow through the contribution of my own suffering united to the Lord, and to share in His Resurrection. It is my hope and prayer that all of us can be grateful for the chance to offer up our own Gethsamenes, that others might share one day in the hope of Easter Resurrection—Heaven itself.
May the Risen Lord Bless You,
Fr. Thomas Nathe
