Easter - Cycle A - Cycle B - Cycle C
You have
rescued me
and not allowed
my enemies to
rejoice over me!"
-Psalm 30
We have so many opportunities to witness to the Living Presence of Christ in our world. We can give our lives to the service of the Church as priests and religious. We can live as faithful spouses. We can live as single people who live the faith in our work place and in our involvement with our parish community. All of these experiences are life-giving experiences. They are experiences which will give us a glimpse of heaven on earth - of the Resurrection. These are transforming experiences and lives of on going conversion.
But just like Jesus' Paschal Mystery, these experiences of living Christ's presence in our world do involve times of passion, death, pain and sorrow. The Good Friday experiences, as Fr. Justin Kelly, SJ, says, cannot be separated from Resurrection. We have to allow ourselves to die in order to rely fully on God. We have to give up control and give ourselves over to life fully, just like Jesus did. We cannot escape pain in any state of life. But, we can allow the Spirit to work through all of our experiences. We can allow the pain of Good Friday to transform our lives so that we can enter more fully into a relationship with the Father and to rise from the dead.
If we enter into this mystery of death and resurrection, we too can share in the enthusiasm and joy that we read of in the Acts of the Apostles this weekend. As Jesus' witnesses, they endured persecution and eventually they even died for the Name. We too must maintain such a buring love for Jesus! But how many of us have already lost the enthusiasm over the Easter season? We cannot become like the Easter lilies that fade away over time. We must open ourselves constantly to renewal in the Spirit. This is our time to do that. This is our time to rise from the dead!
Peace,
Shaun Lowery
Easter - Cycle A - Cycle B - Cycle C