Leadership
The New Creation: Advancing
the “Companionship of Empowerment”
by Fr. Joe Nassal, c.pp.s., Provincial Director
Our liturgical calendar this year reflected a unique convergence. The
season of Lent, Ash Wednesday, began on February 14th, Valentine’s Day;
and Easter Sunday, April 1st, was also April Fool’s Day. On Ash Wednesday
we were marked by the sign of love, the sign of the cross, the sign that we
were willing to enter more deeply into the paschal mystery. That afternoon,
seventeen students and teachers in Parkland, Florida were shot and killed by
a former student and we were once again confronted with the suffering and
death, the shock and grief of students and parents, families and friends, as
the nation’s heart was shattered yet again by gun violence.
The Easter hope coming out of this horrific tragedy is that students, par-
ents, and teachers are taking to the streets and to the halls of political power
to demand sensible gun control measures to help prevent future massacres
like the one on Valentine’s Day. Unfortunately, too many still believe this is a
“fool’s errand.” But with Valentine’s Day converging with Ash Wednesday to
reflect how the greatest love is to “lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” Easter
Sunday being celebrated on April 1st reveals the greatest practical joke played
on the forces of death: the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The purpose of April Fools’ Day—and Easter Sunday—is to touch the
heights of God’s joy in making us holy fools. On Easter, the yoke of sadness
disappears as we embrace the joy of God’s eternal joke on those who believe
death is the end. The joke is on those who think the forces of death have the
upper hand. We are people of life, not death, as this Easter puts spring in our
step and a smile to crease our soul as we celebrate the season for holy fools.
I read somewhere that the origin of April Fools’ Day is actually found in
the way Jesus is sent from Annas to Caiaphas to Pilate, and then from Pilate
to Herod and back to Pilate in a bureaucratic dance of red tape that resem-
bled “the ultimate fools’ errand.” Another source points out that April Fools’
Day originally “was an early Christian feast observing the day that Christ
was dressed in the robe of a fool, paraded through the streets, and mocked as
an imposter king” before his crucifixion. G.K. Chesterton said April 1st was
one “of the most perfect feasts of the year.” In his book, Lunacy and Letters,
Chesterton wrote that “it is the day of practical jokes, and by that perfect
artistic instinct that endures in the heart of humanity, it was fixed for a day
in early spring. For spring is a practical joke.”
On Easter Sunday, we hear the story from John’s gospel when “Mary
Magdalene came to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark,
and saw the stone removed from the tomb.” Unlike some of us, Jesus was
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April 2018 • The New Wine Press • 3