Happy Easter!

I realize the for many readers, even as I post this, Easter Sunday is past. That means, of course, that it is Easter Monday.

Indeed, in my Church, Easter Week is treated as if it were a single celebration. So it's Easter all week; and there's a 50 day period, a week of weeks in which we continue to live and worship in the glow of Easter. (Jewish readers may think at this point of Shavuot.) All this is by way of saying that the greeting in the title of this post is not belated.

For those of us who are Christian, this is the high point of the year. Christmas is joyous indeed, but the birth of Jesus occurred in order for him to be able to die and rise. And it is that death and resurrection which shows him as our Lord and Savior and promises us our own resurrection and everlasting life through faith in him. That is the central message of Christianity.

We do not deny suffering and death. We do not imagine that God will, or is obliged to, keep us from suffering — any more than he kept Jesus from suffering — but we have the joy, even in the midst of our suffering and troubles, of knowing that through Jesus, God shares his life with us — a liife that will never end, a life in which, after death and resurrection, there will be no more pain and sorrow.

This is a belief which we hold in faith. Non-Christians may raise doubts and objections. There are classic responses (apologetics) which we find satisfying, but no one is forced into belief. We are persuaded, and we believe that God gives us this belief as his free gift. We can recognize the questions and doubts, but we find that we still believe, that we cannot not believe.

For those who cannot believe in that core message of Christianity — that Jesus is risen and he is Lord — we invite you to believe that Life and Love can triumph over the "little deaths" of life — loss of love, loss of friendship, loss of job, loss of ability to do things we have enjoyed — that while there is life there is hope, and that there will be something which can give us a new joy, that the loss of one joy is not the end of all joy.

So happy Easter to all.