In 1992 I visited the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. This museum which documents the history of the USA Civil Rights Movement is situated in the motel where Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968.
Easter means that He helps us roll away the stone of evil letting us savour the goodness of His love
Walking from one hall to another, I could feel the pain and misery of so many who were so cruelly treated by the callous who abused fellow humans for money, power and their other whims.
At moments I experienced the sense of hopelessness the victims must have felt. However, little by little, I could perceive that hope, courage and determination got the upper hand.
The victims stood for their rights believing that a better world was possible, if not for their generation, then for their children’s generations. This struggle for justice was one worth making.
Gradually, I arrived in the room on the top floor, where one of the seminal moments of the movement was lived. On April 4, 1968, King, the champion of the movement through non-violence, was on the balcony of his motel room. It was then that the vile assassin pulled the trigger. The target was not missed. King, quickly losing blood, was placed on the bed inside waiting for the ambulance. Death was not far away.
I stood for a long while in prayerful silence in that place where the blood of a martyr was shed. I had with me King’s book: Strength to Love.
That book has accompanied me for many years, and still does. When faced by hate, King practises love in the certainty that love, even when crucified, rises again triumphant. He is not alone in this struggle and belief.
In the evening of March 24, 1980, Archbishop Oscar Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador, was celebrating Mass at the hospital chapel. He was a thorn in the side of the oppressors and the shield of the oppressed. In what was to be his last homily, he said: “One must not love oneself so much, as to avoid getting involved in the risks of life that history demands of us, and those that fend off danger will lose their lives.”
Having completed the Liturgy of the Word, he had just taken the bread in his hands to commence the Liturgy of the Eucharist when a shot rang in the Church fired by a hired gunman. Romero fell to the floor behind the altar, dying or already dead. The fatal shot had found its target. The Mass was consummated in a different but still extraordinarily noble way on that day.
Both killings took place during the season usually associated with Easter. This is surely not a coincidence but a gratifying act of Providence that wants to show us that the Passion and the Resurrection are not an event that happened yesteryear but a work-in-progress.
The two deaths of these extraordinary men was not their ending. King and Romero saw the evil that there was around them. But their faith helped them to see beyond this evil.
They believed that evil does not have the final word. Paraphrasing King’s famous quote, one can say that they took the first step in faith, even though they could not see the whole staircase.
They paid by their blood so that their people could get to the top of the staircase. Their belief in God and in Christ’s resurrection gave them the certainty that the top of the staircase was reachable and desirable.
King had said he refused to accept the view “that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.”
This is a fundamental Christian attitude espousing a realistic optimism based on the Resurrected Christ. Paul sang the hope generated by the first Easter in 2 Corinthians chapters 4-5. The same realistic optimism is found around us in the products of popular culture.
In January 2012, the, 77-year-old Canadian singer-songwriter and poet, Leonard Cohen, released Old Ideas, one of his most inspiring albums. The incarnation and cross of Christ were nailed in four inspiring lines of the song Show me the Place: “Show me the place, help me roll away the stone; Show me the place, I can’t move this thing alone; Show me the place where the Word became a man; Show me the place where the suffering began.”
Cohen captured the optimistic realism of Easter in the opening song of the same album, Going Home: “Going home sometime tomorrow; to where it’s better than before; going home without my burden; going home behind the curtain; going home without the costume that I wore.” This is Paul’s message in secular garb.
Pope Francis limpidly explained the same message last Sunday. He candidly recognises the evil that surrounds us, for example violence, economic conflicts that hit the weakest, power; as well as the evil that we do, for example our failures in love towards God, our neighbour and creation.
He starkly identifies the work of the wettest of all wet blankets. The Evil One tries to instil a defeatist attitude, saying that we can do nothing to counter evil. He also tries to get us accustomed to evil by presenting it as a respectable alternative way of life.
Francis blasts both tacks. “Dear friends, we can all conquer the evil that is in us and in the world: with Christ,” who takes upon himself the sin of the world, including our own sin, and cleanses it with his blood, the mercy and the love of God.
Then he bodes the joyful and optimistic realism of Easter.
“Ours is not a joy that comes from having many possessions, but from having encountered a Person: Jesus, from knowing that with him we are never alone, even at difficult moments… that seem insurmountable. We follow Jesus, but above all we know that he accompanies us and carries us on his shoulders. This is our joy, this is the hope that we must bring to this world of ours. Let us bring the joy of the faith to everyone.”
Easter celebrates the belief that our plea – ‘help me roll the stone away’ – is answered in a more wonderful way than we could have imagined in our wildest dreams. Easter means that He helps us roll away the stone of evil, letting us savour the goodness of His love.
joseph.borg@um.edu.mt