Easter Amidst Bombings and Pandemics
Easter is where there is despair. This is what the experience of the women and the disciples, including our Blessed mother as St. Ignatius would put it, at the First Easter at the empty tomb. When their so-called Saviour was crucified, they lost their hope. To add insult to injury, even the faint hope they had of seeing His broken and torn body laid inside the tomb while running to it early in the Easter Sunday morning, was denied to them upon seeing the tomb empty, the stone rolled open, the swaddling clothes of Him wrapped up where His legs were, and not finding Him inside the tomb. But, according to the scriptures, that’s when the resurrection has meaning and the Resurrected is indeed witnessed. In a gist, Easter is where there is despair, where there is emptiness, and where there is vulnerability in the utmost sense of the word.
On Easter Sunday 2019, the day of this cruel incident at St. Sebastian Church, Katuwapitiya, I rushed to the church (since I was already in Negombo at that time), and upon seeing the raw bloodbath inside, I was trying to control my tears, anger, as well as despair out of which I found myself asking, “Why, God? Why is it that it had to be this way?” Then, the turned pages of the Lectionary in the pulpit took my attention. There were human flesh, hair, blood stains, and glass pieces all over them. What attracted me the most was the Scripture verses I read amidst them. Though it was during the Easter Sunday Morning Mass that the attack took place, the pages of the book at the time of the bombing had turned back to the readings of the Easter Vigil Mass which said: “Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth”; “The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.” Ever since I saw that, I was consoled as much as I was in bewilderment. Even though I was determined not to capture and keep any photograph of the massacre that my eyes had then seen inside the church, if I have captured anything on my own in my cellphone camera then, it is the following snap of these Scripture pages on the lectern.
History has proven that one disaster is indeed worse and the other has never been any better either. As it is said, caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the current global lockdown situation in and around Easter 2020 might become worse before it gets better. In repeated events such as these, the above Scripture verses amidst a real human ambush, on the day of the Resurrection of our Lord, and inside a church can be seen as nothing but a paradox. Or can we make sense of the triple gems of easter: hope, faith, and love? The sure hope where there is despair, uncertainty, fear, and insecurity; the sure faith where there is nothing to cling onto, including any advanced development of science whatsoever; the sure love where there is an immense need for it, irrespective of any human-made distinction whatsoever. As these pages witness it, it is in that emptiness that God created the world, it is in that vulnerability that Abraham found God in faith, and it is in that despair that God led the Israelites out from the Egyptian bondage.
From one Easter to another, life has never been easy for those who had lived the real flesh and blood experience of the Easter Sunday bombings in 2019 at St. Anthony’s Church, Kochchikade, Colombo, St. Sebastian’s Church, Katuwapitiya, Negombo, and Sion’s Church, Batticaloa, in addition to several tourist hotels in the country. It has ever been easy for those around the world at this very moment are fighting the deadly battle against the Coronavirus. As easter approaches, therefore, my heart goes to survivors of those attacks, the wounded, the traumatized, and those who continue to grieve over their lost ones, be it daddy, mummy, husband, wife, son, daughter, grandma, grandpa, friend, neighbor, relative; to those thousands of people who laid their lives in the fight against the Coronavirus; to those who are at the frontline risking their lives for the good of others; to those who are under lockdown and not being able to practice their religious observances, especially participating in the Holy Mass at this time of the Holy Triduum of the Paschal Mystery.
I honor a word here about St. Sebastian Church, Katuwapitiya, where alone the death toll of the bombing mounted to 115. It has already given four Priestly Vocations, counting not the one currently in formation, to the Society of Jesus in Sri Lanka. I am the fourth one and I am ever grateful to God that he has chosen me for a reason which I am trying to understand every day amidst all that happens in and around me. Please click here to read more about the relief activities done for the bomb victims at Katuwapitiya, Negombo
May this blessed season of Easter, amidst all its despair, bring us that hope, faith, and love that the Risen Lord alone could give us so that we may be able to be born anew and be rebaptized in our closeness to God, to fellow human beings, and to our Mother Earth by realizing, repenting, and rectifying our fallen ways in the Light of the Easter!
