Fr. JC Maximilian

[”The Women at the Tomb” by Fra Angelico]

Have you ever wondered where the phrase, “black balled,” came from?  I believe it started in the monasteries; when the solemnly professed monks gathered for a meeting to make a decision, each would have a white ball and a black ball, and they would cast their vote by dropping one of the balls into a basket — a white ball for “Yes” and a black ball for “No.”  So when a proposal was defeated, it had been “black balled,” it had received more black balls than white balls when the vote was taken.

I heard a story once that when Pope John XXIII meet with his closest advisors about planning the Second Vatican Council, many of the cardinals were opposed to the idea of having an Ecumenical council of the Church.  At the very least they would need more time to plan it.  When the Holy Father called for them to vote on the issue, they started to pass a bowl so that the cardinal-advisors could drop in either a white ball or a black one.  When bowl finally came to the the Holy Father, it clearly had more black balls in it than white balls.  Then the Holy Father took off his white skull cap, placed it on top of the bowl, and said, “See, they are all white!”

While this amusing story reminds us that the Church on earth is not a democracy, I think it can remind us of an even more important truth, an Easter truth.  When human beings say “No,” God says “Yes.”  Isn’t that the real meaning of Easter?  On Good Friday we human beings said “No.”  We said no to the love and freedom and redemption that Jesus offers all of us.  On Easter, God overruled this “no” with His triumphant “YES” of the Resurrection.

We only need to watch the news on television or read the newspapers to see all the evil and suffering in the world, to see all the injustice.  Faced with all that bad news, many want to say that there is no hope, that there is no meaning to life.  These are the prophets and witnesses of despair — of doom and gloom.  They tell us that there is no point to holding on to ideals, in trying to live for the best and the highest we know.  They ridicule the idea of self-sacrifice, saying that it will always be defeated.  They are the voices that continuously say, “No, No, No” and continually nail Jesus to the Cross.

But that is OK, because God has shown that the defeat of Jesus Christ on Good Friday is just an illusion.  God says that there IS a hope.  He triumphantly declares that He is the hope, that He is stronger that suffering and evil.  On Easter morning the empty tomb proclaims that there IS a future for us, and God Himself is that future.  Pope Benedict XVI recently said, “Faith in the resurrection of Jesus says that there is a future for every human being; the cry for unending life which is part of the person is indeed answered.”  To the continuous “no, no, no” of Good Friday, God continuously says, “Yes, Yes, Yes.”  He turns all the black balls white.

All of us can at times be tempted to listen more to the voices of this world that say “no” than to the Word of God which says “yes.”  Too often we want to rely on ourselves, others, and science only to see that none of these can give us the answers.

Marie Curie learned this lesson in her life.  She and her husband Pierre were two of the most brilliant scientific minds in the world during the early modern period.  In 1903 they received the Nobel Prize in physics for their groundbreaking work on radioactivity.  Pierre died in 1906, and Marie was despondent with grief, yet she did not give in to despair.  Every day she wrote in her diary a message to Pierre, and on the day of his funeral she wrote:

“Your coffin was closed and I could see you no more…. We saw you go down into the deep hole…. They filled the grave and put flowers on it.  Everything is over.  Pierre is sleeping in his last sleep beneath the earth.  It is the end of everything, everything, everything!  No, science, as such, does not have the answer.  The answer must come from the other side, God’s side.  It comes from the life and lips of the Man of Galilee.  Into the darkness of death He brings light.  Into the midst of our doubts He comes with His voice of promise, ‘I am the resurrection and the life, he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.’”

In a world that says “No, there is nothing after death,” God says, “Yes!  There is life beyond death.  This life is our preparation for that life.”

In today’s first reading St. Peter says, “They put him to death by hanging him on a tree.  This man God raised on the third day and granted that he be visible, not to all the people, but to us, the witnesses chosen by God in advance, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.”  In this passage from the Acts of the Apostles, the fact of the resurrection of Christ from the dead is not only proclaimed.  We also are given a commission.  We are to make the “Yes” of God known to all the world.

We ARE His witnesses.  The Eucharist that we receive at Mass is the eating and drinking with Him that St. Peter mentions.  In our worthy reception of Holy Communion we are saying “Yes” to God, we are saying yes to the redemption that Jesus won for us not only by His death on the Cross, but by is resurrection from the dead.  It is this “Yes” — God’s Yes — that we need to take into the entire world.

The same Second Vatican Council, which was held because Pope John XXIII did not listen to the nay-sayers, re-affirmed this commission given to all of Christ’s disciples.  While the bishops, priests and deacons, through the special grace that they received through their ordination are entrusted the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments, the Council made it clear that the spreading of the Good News — God’s Yes — is not their responsibility alone.  It is the responsibility of all the baptized to be witnesses to the Good News of Jesus Christ.  In fact, it is to the laity that this witnessing to the Christ’s resurrection in the workplace, public square and marketplace is especially entrusted.

Are you a “Yes-person”?  Do you witness to the joy of Christ’s Resurrection from the dead to all those around you?  Or do you just do the minimum, maybe an hour on Sunday saying Yes with God, and then the rest of the week part of the world’s chorus of “No”?  It is never too late to accept God’s Yes into your life.  Commit yourselves anew to being witnesses of Jesus’ Good News.  Spread the joy and triumphant of Easter throughout your part of the world.  Invite others to join you in saying “Yes, Lord Jesus, You are Risen!  Yes, Lord Jesus, You are truly alive!  Yes, I want Your mercy to heal me, and forgive me from my sins.  Yes, Lord, I want Your Love and Your Grace!  Yes, Lord, yes!  YES!”

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