The Book of Esther is a curious text of the Holy Bible. It is especially disconcerting that, in the entirety of the Catholic Lectionary cycle, we read only from these seven verses. This is it. This is the only thing that the majority of Catholics will ever hear from the Book of Esther — these seven verses which we proclaim during Lent. Most Catholics are not praying the Office of Readings from the Liturgy of the Hours and will never pray that section that comes every year before the end of Ordinary Time. Most Catholics, even if they have a Bible study in their parish, are not necessarily going to be focused on the Book of Esther.

For those who do hear the words of Queen Esther only in the readings of the Mass, we are getting them without the context. One might assume that the casual listener might have a few questions, like “Who is Queen Esther?” or “Why is she in ‘mortal anguish’? Just what is happening here as we join the story in medias res? So, with this in mind, just what is happening to this woman? Who is she and why is she so upset? And finally, what does this little drama have to do with us?

Well, Esther is set in Persia around the time of King Xerxes I (so around 473 B.C.), who in this story is called Ahasuerus. The King’s queen, Vashti, refuses his request to be shown off to his friends, to be his “eye candy,” if you will. She refuses and, well, the King is annoyed, to say the least. He throws her out, lest the other women of the Kingdom get bad example and start disobeying their husbands.

Before you think is a “girl power” motif completely — and, make no mistake, this is a big part of it — let me continue. There’s a Jewish orphan girl by the name of Esther who becomes the queen, but never lets the King know her origins. Eventually, through a series of unfortunate events — and remember, it’s always a series of unfortunate events — the Jews in Persia are under persecution by a bad guy named Haman and they’re all about to be massacred. And, so as to not give spoilers, and so that you will go and read this book of the Bible, we see a massive reversal of fortune, and it’s Haman who is killed. Then the King goes and give permission to the Jews to go and kill anyone that are seeking to oppress them — and Scripture tells us that they take care of 75,000 enemies, but they take no plunder, they just kill them! This “reversal of fortune” is celebrated today in the Jewish feast of Purim.

So what does this all have to do with us? Simply put, this time period in our world’s history could be our time of “mortal anguish.” Yes, we know this is a time of joy, as the liturgical texts tell us, as we come to another new liturgical year. But does the world today seem worse than ever? For those who wish to have lived in an earlier time period, now you can experience two living popes, Christians almost in schism, empires almost in total war, and a worldwide plague! Yes, things can seem pretty, pretty bad.

And yet, Christ is offering us Purim, a Jewish festival of jokes and gifts and laughter. He offers us the reversal of fortune that only he, being the Eternal Son of the Father, can offer. Christ, and Christ alone, can change this time, and indeed, any time, from fast to feast. His risum paschalum gives us hope as we can laugh at Satan, and all his works, and all of his deadly allurements and see that the prince of this world is defeated.

All we have to do is what the Lord tells us to do in that most Jewish of all Gospels, Matthew: Ask, seek and knock. This is the Lord’s mitzvah, his charity work, which a good Jew is expected to do in the celebration of Purim. It is by us, the poorest of the poor, who come to Christ, the Divine Mercy, who is the only one who can, as Esther, pleads, “turn our mourning into gladness
and our sorrows into wholeness.”