The solemnity of Easter, the celebration of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead after his crucifixion and his placement in the tomb, is central to our Catholic faith and our identity as Christ’s disciples. The resurrection is God’s definitive answer to death. Nothing is stronger nor more powerful than God. Through the this resurrection, God has conquered both sin and death.
However, we know that at times all of us as human beings can feel a lack of hope in our lives and a sense of despair. At times, we can look at what is going in the modern world in general or in the struggles and challenges we have in our personal lives, and we can become very discouraged. It seems that there is no end to this variety of problems in the modern world for which there are no easy answers or solutions.
From the Gospel texts that follow the passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ, the apostles had gone into hiding from fear of being put to death themselves. In our Gospel today, we hear how their fear and confusion deepens as they see an empty tomb and cannot make sense of what is going on.
Every 25 years, the Pope declares a special Jubilee Year. Many of us adults probably remember the Jubilee Year of 2000 that celebrated the new Millennium. For the Jubilee Year of 2025, Pope Francis has called us to be pilgrims of hope. Since the celebration of Easter morning is a celebration of hope in many ways, it is good for us to feel that we can truly be pilgrims of hope in the reality of our world.
One thing I encourage you to do is to go on a pilgrimage or to visit a holy site during this jubilee year. I myself am going on the Camino pilgrimage of St James in Spain in May. I leave on May 4. I cannot wait to be back on the Camino, my first time since January 2017. I am going to serve as spiritual director on a pilgrimage to the Marian sites in Lourdes, Fatima, and Medjugorje in September. I am also making plans to visit the Father McGivney shrine and pilgrimage site in Connecticut when I go up to the Rhode Island for a mission appeal. Father McGivney is the founder of the Knights of Columbus. I have always been very interested in him. You could even go to a place more local, such as the Ave Maria Grotto in Culman, Alabama, St Mary Basilica in Natchez, or our Diocesan cathedral in downtown Jackson. Going on a pilgrimage is a traditional Catholic way to celebrate the Jubilee Year. It will enliven your soul and give encouragement to your faith. It is a great way to celebrate the resurrected Christ.
I also encourage you to choose a saint, either an official canonized saint or another member of the community of saints, to be your patron saint, especially during the Jubilee year. This Lent, we highlighted saints in our Sunday Mass homilies who spoke to us on our Lenten journey, such as St Martin de Porres, St Maximillian Kolbe, Dorothy Day, St Francis of Assisi, Gerald Manley Hopkins, and Flannery O’Connor. As you know, I am a big believer in the saints and in their ability to help us, guide us, and inspire us. All of those saints I mentioned inspire me and accompany me in different ways. Learn about the saint you choose. Pray with that saints and feel in your heart the advice that saint gives to you. Thankfully, there are so many resources, media sources, and books available to help us learn about the saints. We can find hope in the way the saints lived out their journey of faith.
The hope of our faith, the hope of the resurrection is not optimism or out-of-reach idealism. Hope is God’s gift to us, the call we have to holiness and to cooperate with God’s will. This is the hope of the resurrection that calls out to us today on Easter Sunday. The heart of Jesus speaks to our heart today, offering us new ways to approach the reality of our lives. French Catholic writer and philosopher Blaise Pascal from the 17th century wrote that the human heart has its reasons which our human intellect will never understand. The hope that resides in our hearts in the hope of the new life we have in the resurrected Christ. We accompanied Jesus on the way to the cross during the weeks of Lent. Now, in the light of the resurrection, we continue to carry the crosses in our lives as pilgrims of hope.
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