Christ, Victor Over All Hearts: An Easter Story

Only the Easter Story gives the Christmas Story its fullest meaning. My 2019 Christmas Story was a testimony to God Who never abandons us. This Easter Story is an attestation to the promise of Jesus at the end of His time and the beginning of the time of His Church, the Great Commission—“Behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

An Unforgettable Easter and Then Another

Not long after Easter this year, Paul, my husband, with little drama, baptized his ill Hindu mother on the final day of his visit to India. As in the case of the Apostles, much of “the drama” seems to be in the looking back.

For a number of years after we married, my husband and I lived in fear of his Hindu parents’ interference in our marriage and our faith upon which we desired to found our life. As related in my Christmas Story, the safety of Jonathan, our only child, became our greatest concern.

Jesus seemed as much a threat to Paul’s family as He was to the Jewish establishment of His own time under Roman rule.

Eighteen Easters ago, when Paul announced to his family that he would be baptized a Catholic during Easter Vigil, all hell had broken loose. The parish priest, who had privately catechized Paul, advised him to join the regular Communion line on Easter Sunday in order to avoid a commotion. Paul fled from home on his brother’s motorbike (while his parents concealed his own keys), in order to get to church and receive his First Holy Communion.

His mother’s warning to Paul, “If you eat the dead body of that Jesus, Satan will enter you,” had gone unheeded. She rode around in a cab to over a dozen churches in a bid to prevent her “innocent boy” from receiving the Holy Eucharist because she knew if he did, he would never be the same again. 

When Doors Had to be Shut

The family put the blame on Paul’s Christian wife. Among other indictments, she was characterized as a missionary who received “foreign funds” to convert an unwitting Hindu; someone who had schemed to hook him for his inheritance; a lawyer who would outsmart them using the law; the Devil who imagined herself to be God.

One morning, following a premonition, I padlocked the grille to our apartment entrance after Paul had left for work. Soon, Paul’s mother showed up demanding to be let in. I forced the door shut as she tried to push it through the grille. The drama of the day ended with Paul learning that his mother’s visit was an emotional move to “draw blood” from Jonathan; their family attorney had advised them a paternity test on Paul to prove Jonathan as not his own. Having “lost a son,” they were now trying to safeguard their wealth.

Paul rose to go to the police, a move I vehemently resisted. Hoping for harmony in the future, I was determined not to use law even though I felt no love.

I was able to appreciate the sense of loss Paul’s family felt and all the attempts his mother and father made to rescue him, then retrieve him, then reclaim him. No one among our close circle of friends suggested reconciliatory steps given all that they had seen happen to us. I too took no direct steps whatsoever keeping in mind the safety of my son and aged parents.

Doors of Mercy

Over the years, however, Paul’s parents understood that his conversion to Christ was genuine, voluntary and essentially unrelated to his wife being Christian. Although their threats, our fears and mutual insecurities subsided, both sides shared an uneasy silence. Encouraged by me, Paul began to make monthly day-visits to his family although he never stayed under their roof after he left home in 2003 to embrace Christ.

In 2014, my family moved to the United States. His parents were at the airport to bid Paul farewell. Paul had Jonathan and me stand at a distance while he went over to meet them. When we visited in 2015, I goaded Paul to introduce Jonathan to his parents. He was not ready yet.

In 2016 (the Year of Mercy), God placed upon my heart a desire to visit my in-laws in India and offer them peace. With Jonathan grown up and my parents having already passed, I saw no reason any one of us must live unreconciled. It took Paul three months to decide to permit me to go. He did not reveal our plans to his family until a day before my visit. I cannot say I was utterly fearless in my decision. I was, however, determined and was able to totally trust God. “Be careful,” a dear friend worried. “Hope they don’t harm you.”

Paul’s family gave me a royal welcome and treated me with great love, even reverence. Paul’s parents and members of his brother’s family eagerly took pictures with me. They all filed out of their home to wave me goodbye as I left with the friend who had accompanied me. I had already forgiven them, but I could not relate to what was happening. Our friends praised me, and so did my in-laws to Paul but I could clearly see that it was the power of God passing through the many spiritual strongholds that kept us apart.

Passageway to Greater Things

A passageway opened up between the families. Jonathan and I now occasionally joined calls video to say Hello; they would send gifts; Paul felt freer to share about our faith activities in his conversations. He started to get Christmas greetings from his family. Yet, although prayers for their conversion to Christ were in our hearts, Paul dared not propose it to his family, and passed up several opportunities to do so.

On the night of the Last Supper when the Apostles received their own First Holy Communion, Jesus promised them:

“Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12).

Like his mother feared, indeed, Paul’s life was never the same since he first received the Flesh and Blood of our Lord. In order to do works “greater than these,” Paul needed the Holy Spirit. Without the Spirit of his Master, the disciple could do nothing.

Early in April, Paul found himself in India at his mother’s side in the hospital. She was critically sick. Exploiting his jet lag, he spent many a wee waking hour alone beside her, unceasingly praying the Holy Rosary and the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. One such occasion, caressing his mother’s head, he whispered, “Mom, only Jesus is able to fully heal you.” She nodded weakly.

Paul continued, “Do you believe I am truly contented in my life?” His mother nodded in ready acknowledgement. Paul gently asked his mother to speak the name of Jesus. She surprised him by exclaiming, “Long live Jesus!” He then repeatedly drew the Sign of the Cross on her forehead, having placed a Rosary in her hand. His mother recovered well enough to return home from hospital.

He Did Not Delay

Meanwhile, friends who were praying started to inquire whether Paul would baptize his mother before he left India. The prayers and fellowship of these people, which included a priest here in the United States, brought Paul closer to the possibility. He however was greatly anxious. Understandably so, since baptizing someone is not the ordinary ministry of a lay Catholic. In this case, it was a practicing Hindu mother who had fought Christ tooth and nail.

With just two days left to leave India, Paul pleaded at Mass for the gift of fortitude in proposing Christ to his mother. A friend brought him holy water, holy oil, and an 18^th Century medal of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Our priest friend guided Paul how to go about the baptism. Several friends accompanied in prayer.

I could hardly sleep. Concerned that Paul might need someone beside him to articulate sacred things better in the native language to his Mom, I set out to send an SOS to the very friend who accompanied me on my 2016 visit to my in-laws. The Spirit of God was swifter. Before I could click ‘Send’ on my request for help, Paul pinged me the great news:

“Mission accomplished! I baptized Mom. It’s an absolute miracle. My Mom now has Christ’s indelible mark on her soul!”

Paul had been led, just a few hours before he left for the airport, to ask to meet his mother privately rather than before the entire family. Behind closed doors, having spent a time of prayer with her, he informed her that he was going to baptize her. Immediately, she bent her head forward to be baptized.

Promise of “New Life” Kept

Once again, I look back: In 2003, defeated by the inevitability of Paul’s conversion and his resolve to leave home, his mother had locked herself in the bedroom in a bid to end her life. While Paul sat serenely outside the room praying, the other family members desperately banged the door to stop the mother’s suicide bid. “My Lord will never let any harm come upon her,” he had declared.

Later, in court, alleging Paul to be mentally unstable (and therefore not fit to contract marriage), his family would cite this instance of his “nonchalance” while his mother attempted the drastic step. This year, in the same room, Paul’s mother would come to “new life” through an act of love of the same “lost” son.

As Paul shared the central truths of the Catholic faith with his mother before he baptized her, she was astounded to hear that Jesus actually rose from the dead. All she knew was that He died in a bloody manner to atone for the sins of the world.

Favored by Mary

When Paul shared about the Blessed Virgin Mary and her fiat, his mother enthusiastically chimed in with all that she already knew about her. Paul’s Hindu family had a practice of visiting the Marian shrine of Our Lady of Good Health in Vailankanni, India. (Hindus often included place ‘Christian gods and goddesses’ in their pantheon.)

Paul therefore most fittingly gave his mother the baptismal name of Mary. I recall here the beautiful truth of our Blessed Mother bearing the Son who “saved her” ahead of being conceived in her womb. Surely, through Paul’s conversion, God had in mind the salvation of his mother, and we hope, his entire family.

A Never-Ending Story

Paul now sets himself to guide his mother to receive all the Sacraments of Initiation and grow in a life in Christ. A week after his mother’s baptism, Paul unexpectedly lost his father. Having commended him to the mercy of God, he hopes that his siblings and their families too will eventually come to Christ.

What is this Easter Story but a snapshot of the “little Easters” that mark one’s life, ever so often missed than noticed? The boulder of sin, fear and unforgiveness block the light of Christ from entering the human heart, or love from radiating from within to light and warm our world. Yet, He makes His way through.

The words of Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore from his Nobel Prize-winning poetry (Gitanjali, 45) come to mind:

“Have you not heard his silent steps? He comes, comes, ever comes.
Every moment and every age, every day and every night he comes, comes, ever comes.”