Easter is both joy and hard teaching
Easter letter from Bishop DiNardo
Posted April 17, 2003
(Bishop's Easter Schedule)
"The Ruler of the world has no power over me, but
the world must know that I love the Father, and that
I do just as the Father has commanded me." (John 14:30-31)
Dear Friends in Christ,
All four Gospels remember the words of Jesus spoken at the 
Last Supper on the
night before he died. They are words of farewell, words of comfort, words of
promise, words of the institution of the sacrament of his Body and Blood. They
are words of Judas' betrayal and the apostles' flight, words about Peter's
denial, and words about service and ministry. But no Gospel spends as much time
as the Gospel of St. John spends in dwelling on the words of Jesus at the Last
Supper - five chapters worth of his words!
At the heart of the Farewell Sermon at the Last Supper in the Gospel of Saint
John is a simple but eloquent and overwhelming mystery: Jesus, the only Son of
God, obediently loves his Father totally and completely. His about-to-be
accomplished death is the highest act of a Son's obedience. It shatters every
other act of human obedience and destroys all human disobedience by accepting
death out of love for the Father. Jesus' obedience "shines," but it is
not just displayed for us to admire. His obedience is an action: he dies for us
out of love for the Father. His death opens up a way for us to share in that
obedience, that death, and the new life that obedience brings. Obedience acts;
it performs! In that obedience, we too can act in obedience to the Father. This
is simple. This is stark. This is profound.
Easter is the Father saying, "yes" to that obedience. Jesus truly
rises from the dead bodily and integrally. The Father shows him in his glory to
the world. He gives his "yes" to the prayer of Jesus at the Last
Supper: "Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory which I had
with you before the world was made." (John 17:5)
At the Last Supper Jesus speaks with great "objectivity" about his
death and about his Resurrection and about the meaning of both. The apostles are
still confused. That confusion will turn into panic and amnesia at the Garden of
Gethsemane. Jesus endures the brutality of his death alone; in his Resurrection
he reaches out to them in his risen bodily presence. He comes to them to assure
them of his risen life even before one of them had even an inkling of such a
possibility. Easter is not a brute fact, a thing one can take or leave. It
demands conversion much as the doubting Thomas, one of the Twelve, needed to
change and convert and overcome his skeptical amnesia.
Easter is all joy and all tough and hard teaching. It demands conversion and
living memory of who Jesus Christ is. Easter distinguishes fellow travelers from
genuine Christians. For fellow travelers Jesus is a good man, a holy man, a
prophet, and a teacher, even a "martyr" for his "cause" of
the Kingdom of God. But fellow travelers stop short at the Resurrection. In
fact, our culture at large is allergic to Easter and tries to reduce it to
renewal of nature in springtime. Christians, sinners that they are, know better,
or rather with humility recognize the mysterious grace of faith at work in those
who believe. Christians at Easter cry out: "Truly He is risen!" Their
memories seize upon the words of Jesus at the Last Supper and, surprised by a
joyful recognition, are seized and captured by the One who, in loving his Father
completely and obediently, has saved them. They respond in praise and gratitude,
in prayer and sacrament, and in lives of discipleship and service to all, not
just to believers or to those they like. They have come to understand the real
and genuine obedience: "I do just as the Father has commanded me!"
A Blessed Easter!
†Most Rev. Daniel N.
DiNardo
Bishop of the Diocese of Sioux City
