Eastertide: Jesus Is Still Risen! Just Ask the Coptic Christians in Egypt

Last updated on: April 23, 2017 at 10:24 am by Paul Louis Metzger

Eastertide: Jesus Is Still Risen! Just Ask the Coptic Christians in Egypt 2017-04-23T10:24:39-07:00 Paul Louis Metzger

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It is easy for me to move on after a holiday like Easter and get caught up in the following week’s daily grind. Sometimes one might even be prone to think like ‘Jesus may be risen, but I’m back here in the grave.’ That’s one reason why I am grateful for Eastertide.

Eastertide is the fifty-day season in the Christian calendar that marks the Easter season—from sunset on the eve of Easter Sunday to Pentecost. Today is the second Sunday of Easter, otherwise known as the last day of the Easter Octave or the Sunday of the Divine Mercy. Just as there are many Jewish feasts that continue for eight days, as recorded in the Jewish Scriptures, there are many octaves or eight days of celebration in the Christian calendar. In the Catholic Church, gospel readings for worship services during the Easter Octave include accounts of the resurrected Jesus’ appearances.

One of my favorite passages is when the risen Jesus displays unbounded mercy to Peter who had denied Jesus three times during his trial a few days earlier (See John 18:15-27; John 21:15-19). Jesus does the same with all of us. In the Jubilee Year of 2000, Pope John Paul II announced that in the Catholic Church the second Sunday of Easter would be called the Sunday of the Divine Mercy because God’s mercy is “the Easter gift that the Church receives from the risen Christ and offers to humanity….”

The offer of divine mercy is on display in and through the Coptic Christian Church in Egypt. I came across a Christianity Today article titled “Forgiveness: Muslims Moved as Coptic Christians Do the Unimaginable.” The article includes a video clip (made a week ago) of a leading Egyptian television talk show host watching live a colleague’s interview of the widow of the guard at St. Mark’s Cathedral in Alexandria. The guard was killed along with many others by the ISIS bombing on Palm Sunday. The talk show host was deeply moved by the widow’s testimony as she expressed forgiveness and compassion for those responsible for the bombing. In recounting her example and that of the Christian community in Egypt, he exclaimed, “And oh, how great is this amount of forgiveness you have?!…These people are made from a different substance!”

Let’s pray to the Lord to strengthen and sustain the Christian Church in Egypt. Let’s also pray that the Father would deliver our Egyptian brothers and sisters in Jesus from evil, as the Lord’s Prayer instructs us (Matthew 6:13), while also praying that the Father would deliver all Egyptians from evil. May we also pray that we would respond to God’s mercy and model in our various forms of interaction the same merciful love that these Egyptian Christians do.

Just as the widow of the deceased Christian guard at the church offers mercy to those responsible for his death, so the worldwide church today is called to offer the mercy it has received from the risen Jesus to the whole world. Those who are forgiven much love much. Those who are forgiven little love little (See Luke 7:47). The church is called to live every day of the year—not simply during Eastertide—in view of the resurrection in which God declares that Jesus’ merciful life and cruciform love and compassion are the substance of his new world order.

Jesus is still risen, as displayed in the faith, hope and merciful love of this Coptic Christian widow. May his offer of divine mercy be on display in the daily grind through the rest of us who bear his name during Eastertide and beyond.

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