New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Spread the joy of Easter
One of the more colorful, and certainly appealing saints of Catholic history is St. Philip Neri, who was born in 1515 and died in 1595. The Renaissance Rome of St. Philip’s time was much like today’s world. It was a culture that exalted in human achievement and sought to free itself from old ways and restraints.
St. Philip is called the “Apostle of Rome” because he brought the gospel to bear on the city’s rich cultural life at that time. He is also called a “Prophet of Joy” because of the cheerful and appealing way in which he reached out to people. One of his friendly challenges to the people in the streets of Rome was: “My friends, when are we going to start loving God?”
On Easter 2021, the straightforward question of St. Philip echoes through the centuries. In the streets of Connecticut, of New Haven, in our uneasy and challenging times, the question arises: “My friends, when are we going to start loving God?”
Easter is the proclamation of a truth which is decisive for the meaning and destiny of human life and of all creation. In the words of Pope Benedict XVI: “The world is not the meaningless plaything of voracious death. The resurrection of Jesus gives us the certainty that God exists, and that as the Father of Jesus Christ, he is a God of human beings. The resurrection is the triumphant answer to the question of which really reigns: death or life.”
Easter is all about true happiness, about bursting the chains of sin and death that enslave us so that we can know the real meaning
Easter is the proclamation of a truth which is decisive for the meaning and destiny of human life and of all creation.
of love — God’s love for us and our love for him and for one another. How very much we need to rediscover that love in the midst of what the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks called “the revolutionary shift from ‘we’ to ‘I’” in a world of “relativism, nonjudgmentalism, subjectivity, autonomy, individual rights and self-esteem.”
If we accept the invitation to love God, employing all our heart and mind, all our soul and strength, then we, too, will be prophets of joy, and not only prophets, but apostles, too. How much our world, our country, our communities needs such apostles: believers who are not afraid to soar with the angels, to rise from the dead with Christ, to spread the joy of Easter.