That word haunts me at Easter. Yes, the promise of all ages has now been fulfilled in the Resurrection, and we rejoice.

Even so, we have to wait for our slow selves to understand. We are forced to learn patience.

Remember how Jesus was so unhurried when he learned that Lazarus, his friend, not far away in Bethany, was dying? Jesus delayed four days going there. In other words, he waited “forever” in emotional time. Mary and Martha, those close friends of his, did without him as they buried their brother and grieved. Jesus finally got there and each sister cried out words that tore into him.

You could have saved our brother!

Jesus wept.

Yes.

And then he replied, “I am the resurrection and the life.”

On this day we rejoice because we can sense the truth of this statement. This day it is spread out before us in the Great Celebration of Easter.

We followers of God and his Christ take a long, long time to get beneath the surface of this feast, to put ourselves into the hands of, after all, what is not a money-back guarantee, but a promise. “You will be my people and I will be your God.” It is so tough for us to drink the milk of trust in the same way a child drinks at its mother’s breast. We must decide to entrust still another sluggish part of ourselves to God and to his promise.

Maybe it is the length of the Easter Vigil Service that helps us to take in this fact.

In the full Vigil Service there are ten readings, including the Epistle and the Gospel, together with a candle-lighting-ceremony (“Light of Christ”), and numerous Baptisms. Patience is the name of the game. It lets us hear, in sequence, how Abba God created us and blessed us, how he called upon Abraham, how he rescued the Hebrew people as they ran from their captors in the desert journey (and ran from God too).

For a “brief moment,” we are told, God loses patience and turns away! But then “with enduring love” takes his people back, offering water to the thirsty and grain to the poor. Can you trust this? How much?

You will be my people and I will be your God.

Finally the Gospel is proclaimed, announcing an empty tomb! The women in the story believe. The men don’t. At least not right away.

How about you, woman or man, do you believe? Is Jesus risen or is he not? Or is it after all just a child’s fable?

On this Easter weekend, after we have reacted just like the disciples during those seemingly never-ending post-crucifixion days, and even after we sing songs about resurrection, still we do it by faith and trust.

We hear it anew, maybe now more profoundly, with pandemic and Ukraine!

So, we wait, even, with joy!

Halleluiah!

Ultimately we are asked which path we will follow. The skeptical, calculating path of doubters, or the trusting, patient route of those who keep learning to believe—above all and after all—in the tender mercy of God.

Halleluiah!

You are invited to email a note to the author of this reflection:
Fr. John Foley, SJ