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You have
rescued me
and not allowed
my enemies to
rejoice over me!"
-Psalm 30
On top of this, we give ourselves so many reasons to be cynical or just plain disappointed: Why are gas prices so high? Why does it always seem like the Church is asking for money? Why should I venture into the city of Detroit when everything I need is in the suburbs? Why can't the Church be the way it used to be? There's always something that we can find to criticize or complain about. It is sometimes easier to complain than to rejoice.
Today we are reminded of our need to recapture our innocence and to open our eyes and keep them fixed on Jesus. We need to again allow ourselves to receive the Spirit of wonder and awe that Jesus breathes upon the apostles when he appears to them in risen glory. We need to rekindle the excitement and idealism in our faith lives. We need a new energy, a new hope, and a renewed faith. We have to renew within ourselves the Resurrection that we were baptized into.
Lent gave us time to prepare to enter the Easter season. We were called to repentance. Now we are called to renewal and new life - to the carrying out the transformation of every aspect of our lives that we began in Lent. This may mean trying something new or looking for a positive side to what is. This may mean being more open-minded about issues that we are confronted with. It is our job - our vocation - to put the gift of the Spirit into action in our time. This means that we allow ourselves to die and rise in Christ and then we help others do the same by the way we choose to live our lives as religious, as priests, as married people, and as single people. May our desire to sensationalism or our cynicism not prevent us from being open to the grace of seeing the Risen Christ, who is present to us in the word, in the Eucharist, and in each other.
Peace, Shaun Lowery
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