Easter Vigil

by Paul O'Reilly, SJ


						“The women’s story 
						seemed pure nonsense, and they did not believe them.”

						Why is it so difficult to believe good news? 

						And why is it so easy to believe bad news. 

						And the extraordinary thing is that bad news travels 
						quickly and is widely believed even when it is false; 
						good news even when true takes so much longer and people 
						are suspicious of it. 

						

						People who study the Bible often ask ‘why are the 
						apostles so slow to believe. What do they have to lose?’ 
						If they are genuinely people of the Lord, why do they 
						not respond immediately to the good news with great joy?

						

						Well, I think what the apostles have to lose is their 
						scepticism -- their unwillingness to trust in genuine 
						Good News. There is that little impulse in all of us 
						which believes that I am trustworthy, but other people 
						are not. I am wise, but other people are foolish, easily 
						deceived, even malicious. And, if I am a serious, 
						sober-minded man, perhaps I should not be easily taken 
						in by these silly over-emotional women.

						

						Well, when I was a Jesuit novice, in my first year of 
						training to be a priest, the novice master decided that 
						the novices should all go on a pilgrimage in the North 
						of Spain. He had been reading about the life of St. 
						Ignatius and had got to the part where St. Ignatius went 
						on a long pilgrimage in Northern Spain and achieved many 
						deep and wonderful spiritual insights which were very 
						important to him and guided the rest of his life. So our 
						novice master decided that what was good for St. Ignatius 
						was good for us. (And by the way, I am absolutely sure 
						that the thought never even crossed his mind that with 
						the novices safely out of the way, he could go off on 
						holiday for five weeks.) 

						

						To make things worse, the novice master had also been 
						reading the Gospels and he really wanted this to be a 
						hard test for us. So he decided to send us out with no 
						purse, no haversack and so on. 

						

						Well, we rebelled! And after some tense negotiation, it 
						was agreed that we could have a rucksack and a sleeping 
						bag -- but no money. We would have to depend on the 
						generossity and the charity of the people we met for 
						shelter, food and water.

						

						Now I have to tell you that we were a bit concerned 
						about this. You see, just before this, Britain had 
						fought a war with Argentina -- the Falklands war, or if 
						yoou’re Argentinean the ‘Malvinas War’ . The Spanish had 
						been heavily on the side of their fellow Spanish 
						speaking nation. Britain, as you may remember, won the 
						war, with heavy loss of life and, as a result, earned 
						the hatred of a lot of Spaniards. Add to that, we were 
						walking through part of the country -- the Basque region 
						-- which was then having a prolonged terrorist war and 
						which waas known to be very hostile to all foreigners. 
						So, to be honest, we were just a bit nervous as we set 
						out and we were not at all sure how we would be received 
						and certainly not at all sure if we would ever get fed.

						

						Well, our journey lay over 500 kilometers -- that is 
						350 miles. It took us forty days to walk it. And in that 
						time, our novice master had asked us to relive the 
						experience of Jesus in the Desert, preparing himself for 
						his public ministry -- undergoing physical hardships -- 
						hunger, thirst, weariness and homelessness -- and in 
						this time of hardship being tempted time and again by 
						the Devil to give way to weakness and despair.

						

						Well, it was a nice idea. The only trouble was that the 
						Spanish people ruined it. They were just much too nice. 
						Wherever we went, people welcomed us. They opened their 
						homes to us; they fed us; they encouraged us. When they 
						heard that we were training for the priesthood, they 
						wanted to do everything they could to help us. The 
						pilgrimage that had been intended almost to break us was 
						the most affirming experience I’ve ever had. For all 
						five hundred clicks, we walked on air. We felt buoyed up 
						-- carried along -- like a kite -- on an immense wind of 
						people’s go good-will. We had a great time.

						

						And, eventually, we got back to the novice-ship and our 
						sour old novice-master. He asked us what it had been 
						like. And we told him: we told him of the goodness of 
						the people. We told him of their generosity -- of their 
						eagerness to help us in training to serve the Church. We 
						told him everything. 

						

						And do you know what -- he wouldn’t believe us! 

						

						And I don’t blame him -- if I had not experienced it 
						myselff, I would not have believed it either. So I made 
						myself a promise that -- every time I am tempted to 
						think the worst of people I don ™t actually know, I 
						would remember the people of the Basque country. And I 
						would embark upon whatever God sends me to do with hope.
						

						

						So let us not be too harsh on the apostles -- or any 
						other atheists we happen to meet. If we had not 
						experienced the power of the Resurrection in our own 
						lives, we would not have believed it either. 

						 

						Let us stand and profess our Faith in God who redeems us 
						more than we are able to believe. 

Mount Street Jesuit Centre,

114 Mount Street,

London SW1K 3AH.

ENGLAND.

fatbaldnproud@yahoo.co.uk