I love talking with the older Jesuits who are in our retirement home.  They have seen everything.  And they had so much life experience in them that they could keep things in perspective.  They didn’t get too rattled about anything.  A number of them have experienced significant struggles—you could even say failures.  But they “made it through to the other side.”  By that I mean they now had a kind of freedom.  It was like they had died—to themselves, to their ego, to the need to prove themselves to others—and now they lived in new freedom.  

St. Paul in the Letter to the Romans says, “If, then, we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him.”  What is he saying?  Franciscan author Fr. Richard Rohr says, “the only way up is down.”  By this he means that for us to grow spiritually, we have to undergo humility, struggle, and even failure.  In other words, our ego has to die.  We have to go through a period where we can no longer think we are the great person we thought we were because of our popularity, or because of our reputation, or prestige.  We are no longer be the person who is always right, who always gets his/her way.  We have to let go of everything . . . we have to go into the tomb, where it is quiet.  And in the tomb only place where we can find hope, or life, is God.  And this, then, allows us to come out of the tomb in a new way, a new resurrected person.  Our value now no longer comes from anything external.  Rather, our value and worth all come from God.

So many of you know this already.  Your dreams have died.  The obstacles in your lives have been too great.  You have had to let go of so much.   Some of you have not been able to be with loved ones back in Mexico when they have died.  Others of you have felt rejected by dear ones.  Still others have had family members deported.  And somehow, from the darkness of these tombs, you find some light, some life.  You have been forced to find new meaning, new worth.  You are living proof to me of the resurrection.  Today we celebrate that new life that Christ, who died for us, brings us all.  Happy Easter!