An Easter Reflection from Abbot Benedict

Abbot Benedict and the monks of Conception Abbey want you all to know you are especially in our prayers this Easter as we celebrate the Resurrection of our Savior!

The image occurred to me recently that we here in our monastery and you in your homes are like Noah and his family in the ark, protected as well as we can be from the destructive forces all around us, huddled together, hoping our ark will not spring a leak or tip over and not sure how long this will last. 

Being shut up in an Ark—or a monastery or a home—may not seem like an image for Easter; it would seem better to describe Lent!  But Easter is precisely about God saving his people from something far worse than the sickness or even the physical death that comes from a flood or a pandemic.  Easter celebrates our salvation by God from eternal death, which would have been our fate if His Son, Jesus, had not died on the cross and risen from the dead. 

Easter is the culmination of the most solemn celebration in the Church, known as the Paschal Mystery, which refers to the suffering, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ.  They are seen, not as multiple events but one event with numerous parts, each of which is essential to the divine work of salvation.  Jesus spoke of it as “my hour” in which the Father would glorify him, and he would glorify his Father. (John 17:1)

The salvation of Noah also included parts:  building the wooden ark according to God’s specifications, filling it with family and animals of every kind, enduring the prolonged confinement and uncertainty in close quarters and finally sending out the dove to confirm that the waters had subsided and they could rise up out of the ark.  (Genesis 6:5 – 9:17)

There must have been a great joy in Noah’s heart when the dove brought back the olive branch and then found a home away from the ark.  That joy should be ours this Easter because we too have been saved, not by the wood of the ark but by the wood of the cross.  This salvation is affirmed and recognized by the rising of Jesus from the tomb.  But the rising from the tomb is one with the death on the cross. 

And for us, being still in the ark on Easter morning is nevertheless a promise of salvation, if only we trust the Lord to bring us safely to dry land again.  Easter is not just celebrating the last stage of the Paschal Mystery, the accomplished liberation.  Easter is, even more, a celebration of our faith in God’s promise of victory of light over darkness, freedom over slavery, life over death, now only partially achieved but certain to be completed.  That faith brings us true hope, and that hope brings us great joy, already here on earth.  We have yet to experience the fullness of the Paschal Mystery, but we believe and hope that God’s will for our salvation has already been accomplished.  A little more rocking back and forth in our ark shouldn’t dampen that faith, hope and joy!

For Reflection:  What do you look forward to most once we can move about freely again?  What lessons of faith and hope have you learned?