Easter Sunday
“Garden Tomb” by Jessica Puma
Despair is Easy. Hope is Hard.
By Laura Pittenger Jordan
Over two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ entered a broken and bloodied world, one both foreign and familiar to us. He departed this world with a message of hope: Jesus has conquered sin and death and opened the gates of Heaven for us. Alleluia!
Our world tempts us daily to despair. To read the headlines is to inhale misery and exhale lament. The problems of the nations are mounting; danger is ever-present, drawing nearer. Those entrusted with our protection have abandoned the most vulnerable. Innocents sit in prisons, separated from their families. Wars led by madmen rage on, with children caught in a cycle of endless violence. This same world, which Christ saw fit to enter, breaks our hearts.
Despair is easy. Hope is hard.
But I submit to you, reader, a twist on an old idea: despair is the opiate of the masses.
Despair proclaims that our efforts are meaningless, that try though we might, we cannot change the world for the better. Despair keeps us downcast and depressed, motionless. Despair is death itself.
1 Corinthians 15 reminds us that if Christ has not been raised, then our hope is in vain. But He has been raised. “Where, O death, is your victory?” writes St. Paul. “Be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”
It is our hope in Christ that trounces the temptation to despair. It is our hope in Christ that keeps us working, painting, writing, praying, striving to build a better world than the one we entered – the world that Christ Himself loved enough to enter.
Every bit of art you create is an offering of hope, an antidote to the poison of despair. Each brush stroke is a prayer that says the world can be made beautiful, if we only dare to hope.
Hope lets us act. Hope lets us rise from our slumber and opens the church doors on Easter Sunday to celebrate the victory of our Lord with our faith communities. (And if you’re really ambitious, hope keeps you standing upright with an open flame during the Easter Vigil – enjoy your lazy morning, you go-getter, you.)
This Easter, let hope save you from despair. Christ is calling. Arise! Alleluia!
Thank you for praying with the Catholic Artist Connection community during the Lenten season. You are joined by so many artist-believers throughout the world. United in hope, we are never alone.
Happy Easter!
Laura Pittenger Jordan is the treasurer of the Catholic Artist Connection. She is a playwright and editor based in New York.
Jessica Puma is a painter whose work explores the intersection of memory, architecture and the sacred through a language that moves between representation and abstraction. In The Garden Tomb, she meditates on Christ's Resurrection and the effulgent light and color that undoubtedly greeted the soldiers standing guard.
Jessica Gerhardt (she/her) is a singer-songwriter, worship musician, visual artist, and theology teacher at Immaculate Heart HS, home of the "Rebel Hearts" in Los Angeles. Follow her work at www.jessicagerhardt.com or at @jgerhardtmusic.