Today's Many Catholics Confused - Easter Sunday( 2025-04-20)

   

1. Easter Sunday is the most important festivity in the Christian calendar, it is greater than Christmas itself.

2. On Christmas we celebrate the Incarnation, God, while remaining true God, becomes true Man. On Easter we celebrate the reason for His Incarnation. We celebrate Our Lord’s Resurrection, which is the proof that God has accepted the work of Redemption wrought by Our Lord Himself. Ergo, Easter is a more joyous and solemn festivity than Christmas, because Easter is the reason why there is Christmas, therefore Easter indeed is THE festivity of joy.

3. But our ‘alleluias’ do not feel as joyful. We sing them but only out of habit, perhaps. Our alleluias do not spring forth with a true sense of joy from our hearts. Is it the corona virus? Is it the war in different parts of the world? Is it the impending or looming war we’ve always had? Is it the current political turmoil? Is it financial or economic instability? Is it because your project was a failure? Is it because you lost someone dear to you?

4. Can we really honestly say that if these fears and sorrows we have just mentioned were absent, the joys of Our Lord’s resurrection will be more heartfelt? These past few years have I really had truly joyfully heartfelt Easters? If not, then WHY?

5. At first glance we might say it is because we have confused happiness or joy with pleasure. And this is quite true. Just think: how many people, how many Catholics today think, at least in practice, that joy and pleasure are one and the same? How many Catholics today say that they cannot have a happy Easter because their pleasures are curtailed, limited, by their fears, sorrows and hardships? How much sins involving alcohol, drugs, gluttony, fornications and adulteries, impurities, for the sake of a happy Easter or simply for the sake of happiness?

6. Also, another reason is that we have forgotten that happiness is something conditioned by its contrary. For example: if I have my birthday cake everyday of the year, when my birthday comes, will I still appreciate having a birthday cake? Or let me put it this way: who can appreciate the state of good health better, he who never gets sick or he who just recovered from a deadly illness, or maybe from a long painful illness?

7. Now, we have not heard ‘alleluia’ for 10 straight weeks. When I heard it today, my heart did not swell with happiness. That’s because: either I celebrated Our Lord’s Resurrection everyday the whole year, or perhaps my Lenten season was not really penitential nor my Holy Week not very holy… Which do I think is the right answer in my case?

8. During the COVID lockdowns internet traffic has increased… but not so men could learn more, nor for men to do more useful things. The exponential increase in internet use was to facilitate more sins against purity. Last Friday, which was Good Friday, someone really did this: “I deserve to celebrate my birthday on time, even if it coincided with Good Friday. So, not only no fasting and abstinence but also a whole lechón (Filipino roasted pork) for us”. Let me ask: what is being catholic all about then?

9. But this confusion between happiness and pleasure, this forgetfulness that happiness is conditioned by its contrary, these are just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. Let us take a peek beneath the surface. Are there more profound reasons than these 2 reasons we’ve already laid out?

10. The first more profound reason is that modern man has forgotten that he is need of redemption. Modern man seems to have less ignorance now, that wound that original sin left in us. With so much intellectual and technological progress, do I still have a need for God? If he forgets that he is less ignorant, is it because of God’s grace which freed him from sin?

11. But justly so, man is not ignorant. He knows he needs to be redeemed, he knows he needs to be saved. He knows that there is still malice, concupiscence and weakness in us. So man still wants to be saved: but from wars, from calamities and disasters, from insecurities, even from pandemics. Modern man wants to be redeemed from every evil which assails us… from everything except from the one thing from which he should really be redeemed: sin, which is the cause of all these present evils.

12. Even Catholics today want to be redeemed from all the effects of sin… how many protests worldwide because “liberty” is violated but they don’t want to be redeemed from sin, the real cause of slavery.

13. If modern catholics have forgotten that we are in need of Redemption, it is because we have forgotten that we are in need of a Redeemer.

14. Of course Catholics still believe in Our Lord. But if we don’t want to be saved from our sins, necessarily we will have to form our own idea of our Redeemer. But it will be an idea that is not according to reality, an idea that is false.

15. Catholics nowadays still believe in Our Lord… but as Someone who only wants peace and love for us, Our Lord who did die on the Cross but only to tell us that he loves us. Catholics nowadays find it hard or useless to believe in a Redeemer who will take them away from their comfort zones, a Redeemer who became Man so we can follow his examples… Who carried a Cross because we have to carry our own too… Who was crucified to show us how grave and terrible sin is… Who died in Calvary to tell us that without amending our lives there will be no glorious resurrection for us.

16. Is it still a wonder why for many Catholics today Christmas is so so important, although in a very materialistic or worldly way, but Holy Week and Easter “it’s just another Holiday”? Oh I love Christmas; it’s all about God’s goodness and His gifts for us. No, not Easter; because Easter necessarily means passing through Calvary and Good Friday. Are we this type of catholics?

17. If we have chosen to forget that we need a Redeemer, it is Bec we have chosen to forget that we are sinners, at least in practice.

18. To be reminded that we are sinners means to be reminded that all of us, someday, have to die. Death is a reality from which we always tend to flee. Just as we cannot deny death, so too we cannot deny that we are sinners. So we criticize, we judge rashly. All the envies, bashings, enmities, all are our foolish ways of proving “I’m a sinner but I’m better than you”. All this because we have a Redeemer, we have redemption, but our self-love does not want it under the form of a Cross.

19. So God, who is truly a loving Father, in His mercy and goodness, removes us from our comfort zones, shows us the reality of death, shows us the uncertainty of this earthly life, He takes away from us His most precious gifts simply because “God does not want the death of the sinner but that he converts and live”.

20. “Oh, Fr, the corona virus is man-made”, “Oh Father, my business or my project failed because of such and such persons”, “Oh Father for these political turmoils and even wars, the causes are made by men”. Man-made or not, what we know for certain is that “no leaf falls on the ground, no hair falls from your head, w/out the permission of your Heavenly Father”. God wants to save us, from sin, yes. But first of all from our own foolish selves.

21. As you can see, the holy and spiritual joys of Our Lord’s Resurrection are incompatible with hearts which have forgotten their Redeemer and their need of redemption.

22. If we have missed our chance this year to more worthily honor Our Lord in His Passion and death, may our present sufferings help us do better and hope for Our Lord’s favor.

23. In the midst of the false joys of this pagan or paganized world that surrounds us, we wish you all a holy and happy Resurrection Sunday of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

 fr. Fedei Ferrer