Crime, open borders, inflated prices, gender ideology, critical race theory, male athletes competing as women — the list goes on and on in these divided states of Biden.  According to one of Biden’s campaign commercials, all this success is because of you, and by contributing to his campaign he can finish the job.

Perhaps the liturgical celebration of Easter and its historical significance would be a welcomed respite before the 2024 presidential campaign goes full throttle.

Then again, maybe not.

An email I received from a friend was direct and concise:

I work for a company known as Carpenter Technology Corporation in Reading, Pennsylvania. This company manufactures specialty steel alloys. Important, but hardly essential. This year management has decided to force employees to work, not only through the Triduum, but on Easter. A high percentage of these employees are Christians. This is not voluntary. These Christians must labor on the most sacred and holy day of the year. I refuse.

Carpenter Technology’s website’s credo bloviates:

We value each person as an individual, respect their aspirations, and act honorably in our interactions.

We maintain the highest ethical standards in how we interact with each other, customers, suppliers.

Yet Easter Sunday, the high holy day of the Christian liturgical calendar, is just another day on the job. Worship has been uprooted and dismissed by the money changers. It’s not like this hasn’t happened before.

Carpenter Technology is anchored to the postmodern times. 

They are far from alone.

The NFL announced they will play not one, but two games on Christmas, which happens to fall on the one day that the league never schedules — Wednesday.  Last week a News-Item poll conducted in the more conservative Pennsylvania Coal Region asked if celebrating Easter was a big deal in your family and 39% said “not really/not at all.”  More telling was Pew Research Center’s recent poll that 80% of Americans say religion’s influence is declining — an all-time high.

During my five-year tenure as a Confraternity of Christian Doctrine instructor, I would ask my fourth grade charges if they had $168, would they part with just one dollar for me? All volunteered without hesitation. The 168 represented the hours we are given in a week. The request for a dollar represented that one hour in church.  That is the very minimum, yet many of the baptized just can’t meet the obligation while pilfering time.

God is anything but King; rather, He remains just one of many chores on an exhaustive list, a brief Sunday interlude, provided time permits. The Third Commandment decrees us to keep Holy the Lord’s Day. For all its human imperfections, the Church is the bride of Christ that equips the faithful to proclaim and live the Gospel. God Himself rested and told us to do likewise. God’s Ten Commandments are not some random suggestions but reinforced dogma throughout time and creation.

God gives us Sunday to meet our needs, not His.  The second chapter of Mark’s Gospel tells us how the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

We worship a God who acts in human affairs and places His only begotten Son’s life, crucifixion, and resurrection at the center of human history.  Through the free will of the secular modernist many consider such dogma a quaint archaism.

When I asked my friend if other workers at Carpenter Technology were as upset as he was, his response was unsurprising. “Nobody cares. Most disheartening is the reaction of most employees as many are thrilled at the prospect of earning double-and-half overtime pay.”  

Every Sunday is a mini-Easter, and is significant because it is the day when Jesus rose from the dead.

Since Jesus is raised, your faith is not in vain.

My friend understands this in the most profound way knowing that in this life that none of us asked for, it has a purpose that exceeds the unrelenting power of mortal death. He has turned a difficult situation into a soul saving one understanding he may be in this world but is certainly not of it.

He left me with this quote from Matthew 16:26: “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?”

Happy Easter.

Image: Free image, Pixabay license, no attribution required.