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Easter Springs to Life
By Diane M. Houdek
Source: Catholic Update
Published: Monday, April 09, 2012

Pope Benedict XVI looks at a giant chocolate Easter egg following his general audience April 4.

Easter is the high point of our liturgical year, as the resurrection is the pinnacle of our Christian identity. Yet it’s the most difficult feast to understand. Unlike Christmas, which brings the Son of God to a human level we can begin to comprehend, Easter raises us to our ultimate destiny. And the resurrection changed not only the lives of a few people, but the nature of human reality itself. Death was no longer the end of all existence.

It’s no wonder, then, that the secular world has given us images we can hang our Easter bonnets on. But when the chocolate rabbits are long gone and we’re tired of eating hard-boiled eggs, as a faith community we’re just beginning to unpack the mystery of the resurrection. As with any life-changing event, understanding doesn’t come instantly.

A hollow chocolate bunny may be the best symbol we can have for this glorious feast of Easter. At the heart of the resurrection narrative in all the Gospels is the empty tomb. Each of the disciples must face that emptiness and discover what it means.  Our own journey of faith must start in the same place.

Some of the lasting images of Easter and the resurrection take something we can’t know at all from our own experience and put it into the context of our daily lives: an encounter with a beloved friend, a simple evening meal, a shepherd and his sheep.

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