A LOVING, FAMILIAR VOICE THAT CALLS US
When I was a kid, I once got lost in the supermarket. As usual, I had been following my mom around and looking at all the different food items I wanted (rather than what my mom chose). Just as my mom turned the corner of an aisle, I stopped and fixed my attention on all the sugary delicious cereals we weren’t buying. There were so many! Cocoa Puffs, Lucky Charms, Cinnamon Toast Crunch—delicious. After I got out of my trance I searched for my mom, who thought I was right behind her. She was nowhere to be found. I kept weaving in and out of the aisles. I even raced down the top and bottom portions of the market, taking quick glances. I didn’t see her. I immediately felt nervous and afraid. Did she forget about me? Why did she leave me? How am I going to get back to her?
At the height of my panic, I all of a sudden heard a faint, yet familiar voice calling out my name from a distance. I felt immense relief. “She’s out there,” I thought with excitement. There’s no other voice that calls me by my name that way. I quickly moved towards it. The call of my name got louder. At last, we found each other. And we felt a deep gratitude and joy.
It’s easy for me to think of Easter as akin to other celebrations—filled with pure joy that feels like it’ll last forever. Surely the first disciples experienced this joy with Jesus’ Resurrection. It’s a joy that can’t be contained in just a moment. That’s why the Church, from as early as the third century, lets the Easter joy overflow into a 50-day season from Easter to Pentecost.
But didn’t we just pray with this intense loss of Jesus? How can I go from sadness, or confusion, to intense joy, especially with the pandemic of Covid-19, the anti-Asian and anti-Black hate, and all the socio-economic inequities? If I’m honest with myself, this notion of pure joy can make it hard to celebrate Easter for seven weeks. As a brother Jesuit once genuinely, yet also sarcastically, started Mass: “We gather today for our 38th day of ceaseless joy...”
But St. Ignatius of Loyola says that the key to Easter is this: Jesus always comes in the guise of the consoler. This suggests that Easter is not only found in pure joy. There are many possibilities. It’s also about new life and hope coming into places of grief, doubt, fear, loss, and guilt. It’s about consolation in ambiguous, or confusing times. He suggests we look to accounts of the resurrection from the gospels, and we will then notice how the Risen Christ understood what each of the disciples needed in order to believe.
In today’s gospel, we find Mary Magdalene weeping at the tomb because she couldn’t find where they had laid Jesus. She was completely disoriented by what happened. She heard her name from the one she thought was the gardener, but was Jesus. Mary needed to hear her name. That personal encounter with Jesus re-centered her and filled her with a gratitude and joy that overflowed into a mission: to announce the good news of his resurrection to the other disciples.
May we let Jesus call us by name, to address us with intimacy and affection, so he can send us to be witnesses of his good news to others.
David Romero, SJ