On the day Jesus was raised from the dead, Jesus' women friends took spices to the tomb, and they found the stone rolled away. Two angels told them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here: He has risen!" (Luke 24: 1-6) Jesus also appeared to Mary of Magdala, and sent her to tell the men that he was risen from the dead. How amazing that, in a solidly patriarchal culture, the women got the best Good News in the world first! Jim Wallis comments in Sojourners magazine,
"In so many of the gospel stories that are familiar to us, women were behind the scenes - always there, always present, always faithful - but nearly always in the background and hardly ever mentioned by the men in the stories, and certainly not the ones writing the stories. Their testimony as women was not even admissible in court under Jewish law; the word of a woman had no public credibility in that patriarchal culture. But God chose to reveal the miracle of Jesus' resurrection first to women. They were then told to report the news of the empty tomb to the men...."
So often, today, we hear people speak out who constantly have to wage a battle to be seen for the totality of who they are.
African American actress Viola Davis told a reporter "My biggest wish as an actress of color is that people will just see me....not me as a social statement...just me."
And there are places in this world that people are still being persecuted, imprisoned, tortured, even killed, for who they are.
On April 7, the U.S. State Department released a statement that there is intense concern because they have numerous credible reports that in the Republic of Chechnya, there has been the detention of at least one hundred men on the basis of their sexual orientation, many of them tortured, and in some cases, the torture leading to their death. The spokesman for Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya's strong man leader, fuels the violence by making incendiary claims that there are no homosexuals in Chechnya, and, if they did exist, detentions would be unnecessary as relatives themselves would send them somewhere they wouldn't return from.
In the Middle East, we know that many innocent people are murdered simply for being Christians.
Whenever we look into someone's eyes, or hear someone's voice, and those eyes and that voice tell us lies about ourselves, that we are not good, that we are inferior, that we are not capable of doing much, we need to reach deep down into ourselves and find the power of the Holy Spirit, placed within us from the moment of our conception, and renewed in greater power through our Baptism. This is the Power which raised Jesus from the dead! This is the Power that can raise us from emotional and spiritual death!
Pope Francis well understands the power that resides within every human being, the Power of our indwelling God Who constantly reaffirms our dignity, and our promise to us.
In October 2014, there was a three day meeting at the Vatican, called the World Meeting of Popular Movements, during which Pope Francis and a number of Bishops met with one hundred grass-roots activists from around the world. The Pope didn't invite the heads of powerful labor unions, or the Red Cross, or CEOs of powerful corporations, or representatives from the World Bank. Joe Gunn, the Ottawa-based executive director of Citizens for Public Justice, an ecumenical organization that promotes justice, peace, and the integrity of creation, wrote in an article for the Catholic Prairie Messenger,
"Chances are that you will never have heard of this encounter....One of the main organizers, Sergio Sanchez, is a robust man from a shantytown of Buenos Aires,who transformed the lowly occupation of collecting cardboard waste into a new social movement....Apparently Bishop Bergoglio (who is now Pope Francis) had been involved with these mainly undocumented migrants since 2006, saying mass and baptizing their children, while affirming their dignity."
Pancha Rodriguez, from the National Association of Rural and Indigenous Women in Chile, spoke out about the relentless pressures on rural producers from the transnationals and their own governments to plant genetically modified seeds.
Ghanaians spoke out about mining devouring Africa.
A woman representing American organic farmers warned about the way big agricultural companies and well-funded corporate think tanks try to manipulate them and deny global warming.
Other delegates represented organizations such as the South African Waste Pickers Association, the National Slum Dwellers Federation of India, and the Landless Peoples' Movement in Brazil.
For his book "Pilgrimage: My Search for the Real Pope Francis", Mark Shriver interviewed Sergio Sanchez about what happened at the World Meeting of Popular Movements at the Vatican. He said, unlit cigarette perched between his lips, "Well, at a certain point, the Pope was there, he was talking about these problems, inclusion, dignified housing for all, and then about the land. After he spoke, the Pope greeted each of us, and had his photo taken with every one of us, all one hundred!
"We left with the commitment to work with all the organizations in the world.
The Pope said that there has to be a house for everyone, and regarding social inclusion, that this struggle is not the struggle only of us, the cartoneros (cardboard recyclers) that are working here, but there are people wearing a suit and a tie that are also excluded because they work in the informal economy. That is the struggle that we are engaged in, and he knows that we will make a noise."
What else did the Pope say to them?
"I thank you - you who suffer exclusion and inequality - ...for accepting the invitation to discuss the many very serious social problems that afflict the world today....This meeting of grassroots movements is a sign, it is a great sign, for you have brought a reality that is often silenced into the presence of God, the Church, and all peoples. The poor not only suffer injustice, they also struggle against it!
"You are not satisfied with empty promises, with alibis, or excuses. Nor do you wait with crossed arms for NGOs to help, for welfare schemes, or paternalistic solutions that never arrive, or if they do, then it is with a tendency to anesthetize or to domesticate....and this is rather perilous. One senses that the poor are no longer waiting. You want to be protagonists. You get organized, study, work, issue demands, and, above all, practice that very special solidarity that exists among those who suffer, among the poor, and that our civilization seems to have forgotten, or would strongly prefer to forget....
"You have your feet in the mud, you are up to your elbows in flesh and blood reality. You carry the smell of your neighborhood, your people, your struggle! We want your voices to be heard - voices that are rarely heard....Without your presence, without truly going to the fringes, the good proposals and projects we often hear about at international conferences remain stuck in the realm of ideas and wishful thinking....
"I say you should keep on meeting.....I accompany you wholeheartedly on this journey. From our hearts, let us say together: No family without housing, no farmworker without land, no worker without rights, no one without the dignity that work provides....To make this claim is nothing unusual, it is the social teaching of the Church.
"You, the lowly, the exploited, the poor and underprivileged, can do, and are doing, a lot. I would even say that the future of humanity is in great measure in your own hands.... Don't lose heart!"
Perhaps we're grass-roots activists, and we don't believe that people like us can ever make any changes in society because we don't have any political clout.
Perhaps we are not grass-roots activists. Perhaps we are ordinary, low-key people who only interact with a relatively small circle of people.
Perhaps, whoever you are, you feel inadequate. Unable to change, to grow, to make a difference. Remember the Pope's final words: you can do, and are already doing, a lot. Don't lose heart! If we have faith in the power of the Holy Spirit within us, we believe that no loving word or action of ours exists without being fruitful. We plant the seeds, and God reaps the harvest. All we need is the faith and the courage to go beyond our comfort zones and act with our God-given power to plant those seeds!
In a speech while he was in Philadelphia, the Pope said these words to everyone:
"Faith opens a 'window' to the presence and the working of the Holy Spirit. It shows us that, like happiness, holiness is always tied to little gestures. 'Whoever gives you a cup of water in my name will not go unrewarded,' says Jesus (Mark 9:41). These little gestures are those we learn at home, in the family; they get lost amid all the other things we do, yet they make each day different....Love is shown by little things, by attention to small daily signs that make us feel at home."
Wherever we live, whoever we talk to and touch and work with, these are the people who are our sphere of influence, the people whom the Holy Spirit yearns to heal and strengthen and love and even have us represent through our small and not-so-small gestures of love. This is true Power!
But we can't act with power unless we believe in our innate dignity as a child of God, unless we believe that God truly loves us and sees who we are, what our promise is and how we can grow and open up like the most beautiful flowers in the world. The same power that raised Christ from the dead is living in you! You can do and are doing a lot. Don't lose heart!