Spread the good news of Gospel with unbridled joy

By Deacon Charles Paolino

A faith-formation teacher was telling children about the death and resurrection of Jesus — events that we will soon commemorate. A boy asked the teacher what Jesus said when he first emerged from the tomb. A little girl raised her hand and said, “I know! I know!” So the teacher said, “OK, what was it?” And the girl answered, “When Jesus came out of the tomb, he said, ‘Tah dah!’”

If we laugh at that story, it’s appropriate, because some prominent figures in the Church have written about the Resurrection as a practical joke God played on the devil. In the fourth century, for example, St. Augustine, St. Gregory of Nyessa, and St. John Chrysostom, all wrote in that vein.

This idea gave rise to what was known as the “risus paschalis” — the Easter laugh. And why not laugh? In the Resurrection, death was defeated, original sin was broken, despair was abolished, Satan was shown the way out. Christ was victorious. A good laugh seems in order.

This is why the Church is decorated the way it is, and why the hymns are filled with such exuberance on Easter, and why, after not having uttered the words during these weeks of Lent, we sing again, “Glory to God in the highest,” and “alleluia!”

The books of the New Testament that tell us about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus are known collectively as “the gospel.” The word means “good news,” not “tragedy.”

The Gospel is the good news of God’s inexhaustible mercy, the good news of God’s eagerness to forgive sin for those who come to him in penance. It is the good news that the God who gives us life as we know it now, yearns to share with us his everlasting life.

This is a lesson we can infer from the ministry of Pope Francis. He is not shy about calling attention to the violence and neglect and corruption and injustice and selfishness that plague the world. But he is also not shy about putting on a clown’s nose or a sombrero or joining in someone’s selfie, or flashing that famous “thumbs up” and that big grin. Francis does such things because he believes in the resurrection, he believes in God’s promise of eternal life, and he wants to show his joy to the world.

Pope Francis wants to spread the good news, as Jesus called on all of his followers to do, and he realizes that he can’t do that while mired in gloom. He called one of his most important documents “Evangelii gaudium,” “the joy of the Gospel,” and in that document he wrote:

“One of the more serious temptations that stifles boldness and zeal is a defeatism which turns us into querulous and disillusioned pessimists, sourpusses.”

There is a lot of casual talk about the Church imposing on people a culture of self-hatred and guilt. But Francis knows that is not what Jesus taught. Jesus taught that people are intrinsically good, not evil. He taught that if a person acknowledges and repents his mistakes, God will not only forgive them but forget them, again and again and again if necessary, so that there is no need for guilt.

This is why Jesus associated with the people others had marginalized, discarded, despised—prostitutes, thieves, dishonest public officials, the sick and handicapped whose conditions people of Jesus’ generation somehow associated with sin.

Francis knows that Jesus said through his preaching and his personal interactions that the many resurrections of life in this world are within the grasp of every person — no matter how dismal things may appear.

Francis invites us to be refreshed by the body and blood of the risen Christ and then to go out where people can see by our joy that we believe in the resurrection, that we trust God’s promise of eternal life, that we have hope in God’s endless mercy and we extend that mercy to others — that we get the joke on the devil, that we give ourselves over to the laughter of Easter.

Charles Paolino is a retired permanent deacon for the Diocese of Metuchen