Bread and Peace, and Their Meaning for Easter

By: Mario J. Paredes

In the Catholic liturgy, on Saturday of Holy Week, we stand in prayer and silence at the tomb of Jesus. At midnight, we celebrate the Easter Vigil. While the Jewish people have celebrated and continue to celebrate Passover, as the date of the Exodus from Egypt and the “passage” through the Red Sea, we Christians celebrate Easter as the most important event in believers’ lives: the resurrection, “passage,” the new birth (Jn 3:1-18), and the renewal of the mind (Rom 12:2-3). We celebrate new life, living according to God’s ways and logic, and the transformation of life that those who encounter Christ have experienced and are experiencing today.

The Spanish words “Pascua,” meaning “Easter” in English, and “Paso,” meaning a “passage,” represent the new life by which we Christians confess the Crucified Risen One, Living among us, Lord of Life and history. They represent the new and abundant life (Jn 10:10) founded upon the fact that we can now live the same life as Jesus, no longer as slaves, but as children, calling God: “Abba!” Father (Gal 4:6) and loving each other as brothers and sisters. For in this, we know that we have passed from death to life, in which we love our brothers and sisters (1 Jn 3), to the point of crying out, as Paul did: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” (Gal 2:20).

After Jesus died, the lives of his first disciples transformed. They were never the same again. They attributed this transformation “to the one who was hung on a tree” (Acts 4:10), to the Crucified One. For if the dead man changed our lives, it is because he is alive and has risen. This is a transformation, a new life, for which he is confessed to be the Living and the Risen One. Since then, the best proof of Christ’s presence as Living and Risen in the world has been made by men and women with a new life, living the same life that Jesus of Nazareth lived and taught, loving and serving all.

There are many new signs and good fruits of this transformation, of this new life in Christians. These are signs of new life that the first Christians recorded in all the writings of the New Testament, especially in the so-called “apparition accounts.” I will refer here, in particular, to three of these new signs or traits in the lives of the new men, of the disciples risen with Christ. These are three traits that are valid in the life of every human being, whether he or she is a disciple of the Master of Nazareth. These are three traits that are very, very necessary today in our lives, society, and world.

JOY

There are countless references to joy throughout the New Testament. “Why are you crying?” (Jn 20:11-19). “They left the tomb with great joy” (Mt 28:8). “Because of the joy they experienced...” (Luke 24:41). “They were filled with great joy when they saw the Lord” (Jn 20:20). “Didn’t our hearts burn?” (Lk 24:32)

There are no longer sorrows, fears, or anxieties because now we can live in the joyful confidence of knowing that we are beloved children of God and accompanied, forever, by the presence of the Risen One in history: “I will be with you always...” (Mt 28:20). Now we can live in the joy that “nothing and no one can take away from us” (Jn 16:20ff).

It is a joy that is not stridency and noise, but one that springs from the heart that knows it is loved by God the Father and can – for that very reason – live, loving everyone as brothers and sisters. It is the joy that arises from the certainty of the final victory of the victor who consoles and encourages us by saying to us: “You will have tribulations in the world, but be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world” (Jn 16:25).

Joy then becomes the first virtue of Christians, the light and salt of the disciples in the world. Without joy, the anxieties, resignations, obligations, and heavy burdens arise, so contrary to the Gospel.

PEACE

“Peace be with you!” (Jn 20:19). The best fruit of the new life that the Crucified One gives us, the most important and urgent, is the building of the peace that Christians must achieve in the world. The Risen One lives among us if we can build peace as a result of love in its highest expression, forgiveness. The confessions of faith about the Risen One, made by ‘Christians’ incapable of giving the world the peace that Christ offers us, are false. Christ lives when we can build peace, fraternity, and God’s sovereignty in the world through forgiveness.

“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you.” (Jn 14:27) Christians believe that Jesus brings us peace; nay, that He is our peace. We believe that peace has as its sole and ultimate motivation, love, which springs from the acceptance of the other as different from me, but whom I recognize as a brother whom I can and must always forgive.

All this is different from and contrary to the petty concepts or conditions of peace sought and offered by the world. The peace that Jesus brings us is different from and contrary to the silence of arms, accursed instruments that leave rivers of blood, thousands of dead, abandoned, orphans, innocent victims of senseless hatred, sad crying, loneliness, millions of displaced people without land, shelter, bread, illusions, without a future, without love. The peace of Christ is different from the silence of cemeteries, exponents - in this case - of heartbreak, hopelessness, and human stupidity. Different from the violent imposition of the strongest on the weak and the treaties and negotiations that are signed and dissolved according to the selfish swing of human ambitions, lies, and whims.

BREAD

“They recognized him in the breaking of bread.” (Lk 24:30-53) Accounts of apparitions occur in the context of meals. The celebration of the Eucharist requires us to break and share bread. And when this does not happen, when our Eucharists do not go beyond the walls of the temple, when, in the world, some are fed up, and others die of hunger, then we must ask ourselves about the truth and value of the Eucharist in a hungry world and our confession of faith in the Risen Christ.

If we do not break and share bread, Jesus Christ will not be recognized as Living in the world. Bread and everything that tastes like bread: shelter, work, education, clothing, an outstretched hand, an open heart, social opportunities to live more humanely and with dignity every day, etc. Christ is recognized as Risen and Alive - among his disciples - when we sit fraternally at the same table, the table of the world - we can break and share our daily bread with everyone, but especially with our companions on the journey who are most in need.

“They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him!” (Jn 20:1-9) Mary Magdalene’s cry appears to be a complaint, lament, a claim of the world to Christians: they took him out of the tomb, they confess him to have Risen, but where have they put him? The sign by which the world recognizes the living presence of Christ in Christians is by living and by loving one another. Otherwise: Where is the Risen One? Where have we put him? To make possible joy and peace through bread, daily and enduring in our relationships and societies, we must give, with all our strength, our deeds, and words, our attitudes, a YES to life in all its forms, to respect for the other, to truth, to forgiveness, to solidarity, to freedom, and dialogue in truth. We must, at the same time, give a resounding NO to corruption and lies, violence, selfish individualism, materialism, and consumerism. A NO to intolerance, discrimination, stratification, and marginalization. A NO to all forms of injustice, violence, and death.

We must observe (Easter) by prioritizing ethics over appearance and aesthetics, being over having, and the person over things. We must give primacy to the worker over capital, to service over the power that tramples, and to everything transcendent over the immanent and perishable, etc.

All human beings live in the daily task of being better. Easter hastens us all to “pass” from undignified situations because they are inhumane to a better, fuller, happier, and more abundant life. We must take the step, on Easter, to be better children to our parents, friends, brothers, parents, professionals, bosses, rulers, religious leaders, and citizens. I invite you to live in a permanent state of Easter, in a permanent “passage” towards peace and joy through bread and shared life. “Happy Easter!”