As I drove back from Mass at my community’s Roman Catholic Church on Easter Sunday, I felt uplifted by my Pastor’s message that it is a day for Catholics and other Christians to be grateful and to renew one’s faith. I wondered how others across the Southland were experiencing the most sacred day for all Christians.
When I got home I opened up the L.A. Times thinking I would find a few Easter stories that would pique my interest, but that was not the case. On the front page were four stories. The lead story was about child labor abuse in Afghanistan which featured two pictures of a young Islamic boy, one of which is studying at a Madrasah. Underneath that was a story about how the Koch brothers were out to destroy the solar industry. The other two stories focused on a colorblind train engineer who couldn’t distinguish between yellow and red lights and how student loan debt is hurting the home sales market.
Don’t get me wrong, all of these stories are worthy of news, but maybe on the most important day for an estimated 2.2 billion people on the planet, one third of the world’s population, maybe they could have fit a paragraph on the joyous celebration.
Curious, I began to leaf through the paper to see where The Times was hiding that Easter Story. On page four was a picture of a procession in Israel at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, but there was no story, just a photo.
Finally, on the second to last page of the editorials, there was a piece written by the author of a book on homelessness, who gathered that the Resurrection is not a time to rejoice but a time to feel threatened and challenged. Which, in my humble opinion, is the exact opposite of what the Resurrection means. For me, Christ’s resurrection means hope and that we will someday “Passover” death to eternal life.