Living into Easter

The Paschal candle is ablaze, and we are deep in this stretch of Easter time when the world of faith invites us into joy, renewal and all the promise that new life brings. 

But the promise feels a little clouded to my eyes.  There is an incivility that has seeped into public discourse, both at home and abroad.  For a people steeped in reverence for the dignity of the human person, the profound lack of respect and care for our fellow humans exhibited by some of our leaders is deeply upsetting.  The news cycle is relentless.  It feels as though misery abounds. 

Documenting the many conflicts in our world, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) describes 2026 as part of a “New World Disorder”, with armed conflict at its highest levels since World War II.  One in seven people globally now lives under the threat of war, and conflicts are becoming more persistent and deadlier, with diplomatic solutions harder to achieve.  Emerging from this is the overwhelming humanitarian crisis. (https://www.rescue.org/article/5-urgent-problems-world-faces-2026?). 

Locally we are feeling the effects with rising costs, and all this serves to remind us that we are in an economically fragile, politically fractured and morally testing time. 

This weekend, the celebration of the fourth Sunday of Easter is preceded by Anzac Day – an anniversary day that has had a profound effect on Australian communities.  We are generations away from the 1915 Anzac experience, but something about it touches the soul of Australians.  Around the country people will gather for dawn services with hymns recommended by the Department of Veteran Affairs including ‘Abide with Me’ and ‘O God Our Help in Ages Past’.  For many families, the day carries deep personal memories – stories handed down, names etched on honour rolls, accompanied by a quiet generational grief. 

In Turkey (the Republic of Türkiye) the Gallipoli experience is also etched into national memory.  The Turkish people remember the event as a moment when their soldiers – many of them young conscripts from villages across Anatolia – defended their homeland against foreign invasion.  This version of history that is presented at the Gallipoli museum can be confronting for some!  Now when we visit the Gallipoli peninsula it is quiet and strangely calm.  The headstones of Anzacs and the memorials for Turkish soldiers are part of a vast green space that overlooks the treacherous sea below.  It is still possible to walk amongst the trenches closer to the cliff line and it is a profound reminder of the shared cost of the war.  And to my mind, it is also a reminder that eventually from this darkness, peace emerged.  For the soldiers of both ‘sides’ Gallipoli is now a place of rest.  For many it is a pilgrimage site that invites reverence and reflection. 

Just 19 years after the Anzac event (1934) Mustafa Kemal Atatürk the founder of the Republic of Turkey offered the following message to the mothers of ANZAC soldiers: 

“Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives are now lying in the soil of a friendly country.  Therefore rest in peace.  There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side in this country of ours.  You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe away your tears.  Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace.  After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.”

These words are etched on a tablet at Gallipoli and have a place in the war memorial in Canberra.  From the darkness of the Anzac event a green shoot of comfort, reconciliation and hope emerged. 

James Keenan is an American ethicist, and he describes mercy as ‘the willingness to enter into the chaos of another’.  And it is into the chaos of the world that Pope Leo is speaking so powerfully about peace.  In closing his Easter message, he wrote:

On this day of celebration, let us abandon every desire for conflict, domination, and power, and implore the Lord to grant his peace to a world ravaged by wars and marked by a hatred and indifference that make us feel powerless in the face of evil.  To the Lord we entrust all hearts that suffer and await the true peace that only he can give.  Let us entrust ourselves to him and open our hearts to him!  He is the only one who makes all things new (cf. Rev 21:5). (Pope Leo, Urbi et Orbi, Easter 2026)

We look from afar, perhaps, and wonder if this is possible.  In a recent Tablet article, Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe OP, reflected on his experience in Ukraine.  Amid the physical and emotional devastation, he was surprised by the intense joy of the people and pondered:

How is joy possible in a war zone?  Because God becomes flesh in these people as the divine word, promising that our lives are touched even now by an ultimate meaning, even as it escapes full articulation. 

He continues, observing that some of the questions he encountered in Ukraine are ‘invitations to become more profoundly alive’ and quoting Rainer Maria Rilke:

“Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is to live everything.  Live the question now.  Perhaps then, some day far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.’  From I will give you a heart of flesh (Tablet 11 April)

We are all groping in our own ways to make sense of our lives in light of this transformational moment of the resurrection.  What does it mean for us in our time and place?  How are we to live as an Easter people?  Where do we hear the voice of Jesus calling us into life?

The fourth Sunday of Easter invites us to turn our minds and hearts to images of Jesus as the Good Shepherd.  And I find myself drawn to this weekend’s psalm (23) The Lord is my shepherd.  It speaks to hearts longing for peace and safety, for guidance and renewal, for the ongoing presence of a loving God.  It encourages us to be alive to the joy of life, in the sure knowledge that hope always rises.  We are called to live in the House of the Lord. 

Virginia Woolf might help with this. Whatever happens, stay alive, she wrote:

Don’t die before you’re dead.  Don’t lose yourself, don’t lose hope, don’t lose direction.
Stay alive, with yourself, with every cell of your body, with every fibre of your skin.
Stay alive, learn, study, think, read, build, invent, create, speak, write, dream, design.
Stay alive, stay alive inside you, stay alive also outside, fill yourself with colors of the world, fill yourself with peace, fill yourself with hope.  Stay alive with joy.
There is only one thing you should not waste in life, and that’s life itself.

I cannot change the course of world-events, but I can in my own small way try and live a joyful life, informed by the experience of the Resurrection.  Jesus is alive walking with each of us along our Emmaus Road.  Shepherding each of us through the day.  Indeed, the Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want. 

At the start of each Lent, I plant sweet pea seeds.  They are tiny.  Days pass and then the most fragile of green shoots emerge.  More days pass and suddenly a mass of tangled stalks is stretching toward the light.  When I look at them, they remind me of the joy of life.  I don’t know what happens in the darkness from which they emerge – but emerge they do.  And it feels like a miracle to me.  If beauty can bloom from the darkness – anything is possible! 

Let us live our way into Easter and may there be peace.

By Cathy Jenkins