How do we make sense of being locked in... on Easter?!

Our Christian tradition can be seen as one of surprises and reversals: what we know as Good News in our tradition started as terrible news. The God of our understanding came to us through a young, single, pregnant girl who gave birth in difficult circumstances, and ended with an abandoned and betrayed innocent Son. So, it is reasonable/faithful to wonder… Can some good, who knows what kind, or some similar reversal, come of our confinement and experiences of a global pandemic? Those are tough questions…

From his own confinement, Pope Francis gave an interview last week suggesting how we might escape the confinement we are experiencing and offer something new to the world and our own lives.

Francis says, 

“I’m living this as a time of great uncertainty. It’s a time for inventing, for creativity…

The creativity of the Christian needs to show forth in opening up new horizons, opening windows, opening transcendence towards God and towards people, and in creating new ways of being at home.

It’s not easy to be confined to your house… But inside the home, creativity is not hard to discover. Don’t run away, don’t take refuge in escapism, which in this time is of no use to you.

Take care of the now, for the sake of tomorrow, always creatively, with a simple creativity, capable of inventing something new each day."

For sure, bringing the dead to life is the kind of novelty that only a God could dream of. It’s the kind of creativity that comes from the creator. And it changes everything.

What can I allow God to change in me?

Maybe now is a time to be open to the suggestions of others, to probe what is being asked of me as a searching for the truth... to think with the mind of the creator who would not be limited, not even by death itself! I can sense the desire to believe that who I am and what I can contribute is of tremendous value, no matter how small it seems. Indeed, my most basic actions, such as staying home, encouraging others or not being stubborn, missing out on friends and an Easter feast is, literally, a matter of life and death during these difficult times. We are nurturing our deadening world back to life. Now that’s creative!

I sense that’s something Pope Francis wants.

Have a Creative Easter.