The Easter spirit

MANY things can be said about what the Easter spirit is. In fact, I don’t think we can ever exhaust them. The implications we can derive from the consideration of what the Easter spirit is would be endless. But what we already can say about it should already be enough to make us so understand it as to live it adequately. So what is the Easter spirit? 

 The Easter spirit is about God’s tremendous love for us. It’s a love that knows no bounds. It’s rather us who can give it limits since we are capable of rejecting it. But on his part, he loves us all the way, no matter what. He is bent on doing that, no matter what it would cost. 

 The Easter spirit is about God sending the son to become man to save us. It’s about God adapting himself fully to our condition, even to our worst condition without committing sin, so that we can have a way to identify ourselves with him, which is what he wants for us. 

 The Easter spirit is about Christ, the son of God and our redeemer, eager to fulfill his redemptive mission to the end. Christ does not shy away from the most difficult human task he has to carry out. And in so doing, he assumed all the sins of man and gave them the death blow with his own passion, death and resurrection. 

 The Easter spirit is about Christ sharing his triumph over sin and death with us. What we cannot do, he does it for us—but also, with us. Since on our own, we cannot turn around the infinitely evil effects of our sins, suffering death, Christ does it for us. 

 And so, the Easter spirit means that we have every reason to be joyful, hopeful and, of course, most thankful, which would put us in the ideal condition to keep our intimate relation with God and to live our life that is proper to us, that is, as children of God, created in God’s image and likeness, meant to share in the very life of God, created out of divine love and for divine love too. 

 The Easter spirit should give us an invincible sense of being a victor and conqueror, oozing in peace, serenity, confidence and security, despite whatever. Because no matter how wounded and broken we are, we have the assurance that God will mend us always with his mercy and restore us to the dignity he wants to give us. 

 The Easter spirit, of course, would also make our sense of responsibility over our life keener. We would more sharply realize that we have to do our best to conform ourselves to God’s will and ways, taking up all the spiritual, supernatural as well as the human means to that ideal. 

 If we have the Easter spirit, we would know how to always live in the presence of God, driven always with love that can conquer all things. It would give us an apostolic zeal that would provide us with a burning desire for the salvation of all souls. The Easter spirit is the slayer of complacency, lukewarmness and the other weaknesses we have. It, for sure, will protect us from all sorts of temptations. 

 There are still many things we can say about the Easter spirit. But for now, let us see if we have these marks of the Easter spirit in our life!

Demanding on ourselves, tolerant on others

THAT’S how we should be with respect to ourselves and to the others. We need to be strict with ourselves but always accommodating with the others. First, because the person we would know best would simply be ourselves, while with the others we ought to be more restrained in our judgments. 

 In fact, we need to be always nice to others, even if they are not nice to us. We should always give them the benefit of the doubt. Besides, we really would not know them very well. Most of the time, we can only base our impressions of the others mainly on appearances which can never give us a good over-all picture of how they really are. 

 It’s very likely that we hardly would have the inside story of their life. And whatever traces of other people’s inside story we may have are most likely unreliable, based only on hearsay and gossip. 

 But, yes, with ourselves, we should be very demanding. We should be strict to adhere to the difference between good and evil, pursuing the former no matter how little it is, and avoiding the latter no matter how slight it may be. But such strict adherence should not make us judgmental of the others. 

 If ever we have some observations that point to a certain weakness, failure, mistake or sin of the others, let’s remember that those are observations only which can be at best tentative. And rather than be quick to judge, let us focus more on how we can help them. 

 That attitude would indicate that we are still clear about the difference between right and wrong. Of course, this difference should be based on our identification with Christ who is the ultimate judge to know what is right and wrong. 

 Let us remember that we see and judge things the way we are. If we are simply by ourselves, relying only on our estimation of what is right and wrong, then definitely we cannot go far. But if we try our best to be identified with Christ, then we can see and judge things the way Christ would see and judge them. 

 And so, if we are truly like Christ, our strictness in knowing the difference between right and wrong would not lead us to be judgmental, but rather to be charitable, finding ways of how to help the others. That’s because that is how Christ treats others. 

 On this point, we can cite the reaction of Christ who was presented with a woman who was caught in adultery. The woman clearly committed some grave wrong. But instead of condemning her, he simply dismissed her with the admonition to sin no more. (cfr. Jn 8,1-11) 

 We have to be most wary of our tendency to be quick to judge and condemn others when we feel we know a lot about what is right and wrong, good and evil. This can only mean we are not with Christ yet. 

 Of course, we should also be wary of our tendency to lose sight of the distinction between right and wrong, good and evil, often appealing to God’s mercy, because that would only show that we are neither with Christ truly. 

 When we are with Christ, we would be strict and demanding on ourselves with respect to what is right and wrong, but at the same time, tolerant, understanding, quick to forgive and help others when we see their defects and misdeeds.

How to be like Christ?

IF we want to be like Christ as we should, since he is the pattern of our humanity and the savior of our damaged humanity, and since he has declared himself to be “the way, the truth and the life” for us, then we should learn how to forgive everyone, including those who have done us great wrong. 

 Let’s remember that Christ is first of all God who became man to save us. Since we have been created in God’s image and likeness, and the very essence of God is love, “Deus caritas est,” as St. John said, then we have to learn to love the way Christ loved us. 

 In fact, we have to convert ourselves into love, since that is how we can be like Christ—in fact, to be “another Christ” as we ought to be, if not “Christ himself” as a saint has said it quite directly. Christ is the very personification of love. If we want to know what and how love is, all we have to do is to look at Christ and imitate him in the way he dealt with the people in different situations and circumstances. 

 That is why Christ gave us the new commandment of loving one another as he himself has loved us. (cfr. Jn 15,12) Let us just remind ourselves, as Christ himself has shown us, that the fullness of this love is to forgive, to be merciful, and in doing that, we have to be willing to bear the burdens of the others, just like what Christ did and continues to do. 

 Love is not only wishing and doing others some good. That is already great, but that would not yet be the fullness of love. Our love should go all the way to bear all the burdens of the others, even willing to offer our life for that purpose, and to forgive everyone, or at least to offer forgiveness. 

 Christ did not wait for us to ask for forgiveness. He offers it. That’s why St. Paul said in his Letter to the Romans this wonderful argument: “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God proves his love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Rom 5,7-8) 

 This argument about how Christ loves us so much is reiterated by St. Peter when he said: “He (Christ) himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.” (1 Pt 2,24) 

 And Christ himself said that not only should we forgive those who may have wronged us seven times. We should forgive them seventy-seven times, meaning always. (cfr. Mt 18,21-22) 

 It’s really a tall order, but it can be done, since Christ told us so, and we know that more than us, he is the one who will enable us to do so. All we have to do is to cooperate with him as much as we can. 

 It would be good that we develop the virtues of compassion and mercy, the instinct of always understanding others, of avoiding keeping grudges and resentments, of always looking for the positive and constructive in the differences and conflicts we can have with others, etc. 

 This is how we can be like Christ!