HOLY HOMEWORK

Is There an Alternate Route to Easter?

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Remember the last time we accidentally inhaled something that we should have swallowed? Our bodies reacted immediately with a coughing reflex because food and water do not belong in our lungs. After such a shock, some folks, when their breathing is restored, might declare: It must have gone down my Sunday throat.

This strange expression dates back to early 1900 in this country and probably even earlier in France and the Netherlands where it is also used. The phrase makes more sense when we compare it with the idea of Sunday clothes, which simply means an alternate wardrobe reserved for days when we want to look our best. Alternate clothes, hence, alternate passageway.

Besides suffering, is there an alternate passageway to Christ? Do we know people who were moved from disbelief to faith by some route other than anguish? Like Christ, who asked his Father for the cup of agony to pass away but surrendered to his will, the majority of Christian testimony suggests that the usual journey to Easter joy is through Good Friday pain.

There are many extraordinary scenarios, which illustrate this ordinary path to salvation. And each includes misery, either physical or emotional or both.

Did Dismas, one of the two men crucified with Christ on Calvary, really steal his way into heaven with a free pass from torment? No. In the 1961 movie, “King of Kings,” he resents being compared to Barabbas, a murderer, because Dismas was only a thief. However, as if crucifixion wasn't restitution enough, Scripture attests that his legs had to be broken to hasten his death.

Mr. Soubirous was arrested as a suspect for stealing one plank of lumber, which affirms the poverty of his family and explains why his 14-year-old daughter would go out to gather firewood. Was this teenaged visionary consoled by the waters of Lourdes? No. Again in the 1943 film, “The Song of Bernadette,” she declares that the Lady could not guarantee her any happiness in this life, but only in the next.

For Holy Homework: On at least two occasions during the Easter Season, let's use an alternate route to our house, a trail that is, at least, less convenient. And as we proceed through this cumbersome passageway, let's recall Saints Dismas and Bernadette and so many others who persevered through the sufferings of Good Friday so they could embrace the risen Lord on Easter Sunday.

 

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