While there are numerous secular holidays and celebrations, most end within a weekend or week and don’t sustain the commemoration. Whether we find ourselves celebrating the Fourth of July or Memorial Day or others, we tend to move rather quickly from one to the other.
Unlike these momentary holidays, our religious commemorations and celebrations bring a different cadence and sensibility. Beyond the 40 days of Lent, for instance, we also have the 50 days of Easter. Our Easter celebration takes us from Easter Sunday up to Pentecost Sunday.
These 50 days of Easter, while festive, also seek to engender a deeper reflection on the great event of the resurrection and its meaning for the early Church. In our liturgies, especially on Sundays, we reconnect to readings from the Acts of the Apostles. These readings convey a series of impassioned stories; we hear of meaningful events unfolding in the middle of controversies, persecution, great fidelity and miracles.
Similarly, the Gospel readings echo this need for greater fidelity and commitment to the news of the resurrection. Immediately after Easter Sunday, we hear how doubt and debate enters the story of faith. In the person of Thomas, the one called Didymus, (John 20:19-31) and in the disciples on the seven-mile road from Jerusalem to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35), we discover how the event of the resurrection needs to take on deeper roots in our hearts.
In the case of Thomas’ unbelief and doubt, we learn that the peace offered to the apostles only rests on Thomas after seeing with his eyes and touching with his hands the living presence of Christ. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in His hands and put my finger into the nail marks and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” Likewise, in the debate, discussions and conversations of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we hear how their discouragement finds true hope only when their eyes are opened in the breaking of the bread. “And it happened that, while He was with them at table, He took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. With that their eyes were opened and they recognized Him, but He vanished from their sight.”
For us, too, our alleluia in Christ is never far from our own human predicaments. Like those before us, our lives are fraught with doubts, disbelief, discouragement, anxieties, fears, arguments and discussions in need of consolation and truth that come from the Holy Spirit. We need the gift of faith to bring us to the table of the Lord, where we can see with greater clarity the goodness of the Lord, in the breaking of the bread. In a word, we need to encounter the living Lord offering us peace.
Truly, the resurrection of the Lord and the 50 days that follow are our Easter blessings. Indeed, it is our time to follow the voice of our Shepherd who leads us to new life (John 10:1-10); and a time to renew our faith in love by keeping His commandments (John 14:15-21). And while our sustained efforts these 50 days matter, we can recognize that our way forward is truly never away from Christ: “‘Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me’” (John 14:1-12).
Javier Orozco is executive director of human dignity and intercultural affairs for the Archdiocese of St. Louis.