The Messenger - March 2008 - Editorial The Easter Experience
By John Looby, SJ - 01 March 2008
I would love to have been christened as an adult at midnight Mass on Easter Saturday night with the Pascal fire blazing outside and the church bright with the burning candles of the large congregation.
I was present once when a young man, an American, was received into the Church on Easter Saturday night. He told us of his journey into faith to that moment, from a childhood that was only nominally Christian, to an adult search for faith -during which he studied theology in an evangelical college, to his first contact with Catholics, and finally to his decision to ask for baptism. Many of his fellow students in the evangelical college accompanied him that night to support him in his decision.
Everything that evening came together in such a marvellous way. Reading after reading depicted God’s marvellous dealings with his people: God reaching out in creation, the call of Abraham, Moses leading the enslaved Israelites to freedom, the promised land, and the prophets. Always leading to the Messiah, to Jesus, who would define forever the God-man relationship. There would be no going back on this. Not even the long list of human failures to respond to God, not even the rejection that led to Jesus’ death on Calvary, could stop God. He raised Jesus to life in the resurrection and in one move cancelled the power of death. And on that Easter Saturday night, a young man who had listened to God’s call throughout scripture, fully conscious of what he was doing, answered that call in faith, and said out loud and clear, ‘I believe in God. I believe in Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit, and the resurrection from the dead.’
My own progress to that kind of moment seemed so slow that that adult moment of profession of faith seems very attractive. What I am forgetting, of course, is that God’s love of me began long before I was able to believe in him. Just as my parents loved me and cared for me long before I recognized their love or returned it, God loved me even before he created me. Sometimes we only come to recognize our parents’ love after they are long dead, and sometimes we come to recognize God’s love for us only long after we have come to adulthood and the power to make decisions. In both cases we are the beneficiaries of a love we did nothing to deserve. At Easter we can renew our baptismal vows with the newly baptized and repeat with conviction, loud and clear, ‘I believe in God, in Jesus Christ, His only Son, Our Lord, and in the resurrection from the dead.’
John Looby, SJ