Easter Sunday
April 9, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/040923.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, our hearts sing the triumphant Alleluia!

This is the central canon of our faith. If we truly believe it and live from that conviction, everything – yes, everything– becomes grace.

If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, 
where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.
Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.
For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ your life appears,
then you too will appear with him in glory.

Colossians 3:1-4

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In our prayer today, we might want to be with Mary on that early morning, as she walks through the lingering shadows. Is there something she has yet to release into the compassionate heart of God – some doubt or fear she clings to? Some fruitless crutch in her life that blocks her full yielding to God’s Presence?

She sees the stone rolled away? What does it mean to her? What does it mean to us?

As we will find a little later in John’s Gospel, Mary’s recognition of the Resurrected Christ was a slow and tender dawning. Perhaps our is too. Today, and throughout the coming Easter Season, is a time to engage that Holy Sunrise!

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Poetry: two poems for Easter

Rabboni – by Herbert Gustav Schmaltz

The Magdalen, A Garden and This – Kathleen O’Toole

She who is known by myth and association 
as sinful, penitent, voluptuous perhaps... 
but faithful to the last and then beyond.

A disciple for sure, confused often with Mary, 
sister of Lazarus, or the woman caught 
in adultery, or she who angered the men

by anointing Jesus with expensive oils.
She was the one from whom he cast out seven 
demons-she's named in that account.

Strip all else away and we know only 
that she was grateful, that she found her way 
to the cross, and that she returned

to the tomb, to the garden nearby, and there, 
weeping at her loss, was recognized, 
became known in the tender invocation

of her name. Mary: breathed by one 
whom she mistook for the gardener, he 
who in an instant brought her back to herself-

gave her in two syllables a life beloved, 
gave me the only sure thing I'll believe 
of heaven, that if it be, it will consist

in this: the one unmistakable 
rendering of your name.

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Excerpt from Paradisio – Dante

Like sudden lightning scattering the spirits
of sight so that the eye is then too weak
to act on other things it would perceive,
such was the living light encircling me,
leaving me so enveloped by its veil
of radiance that I could see no thing.
The Love that calms this heaven always welcomes
into Itself with such a salutation,
to make the candle ready for its flame.

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Music:  Love Crucified Arose – Michael Card

Long ago, He blessed the earth
Born older than the years
And in the stall the cross He saw
Through the first of many tears

A life of homeless wandering
Cast out in sorrow’s way
The Shepherd seeking for the lost
His life, the price He paid

Love crucified arose
The risen One in splendor
Jehovah’s sole defender
Has won the victory

Love crucified arose
And the grave became a place of hope
For the heart that sin and sorrow broke
Is beating once again

Throughout Your life You’ve felt the weight
Of what You’d come to give
To drink for us that crimson cup
So we might really live

At last the time to love and die
The dark appointed day
That one forsaken moment when
Your Father turned His face away

Love crucified arose
The One who lived and died for me
Was Satan’s nail-pierced casualty
Now He’s breathing once again

Love crucified arose
And the grave became a place of hope
For the heart that sin and sorrow broke
Is beating once again

Love crucified arose
The risen One in splendor
Jehovah’s sole defender
Has won the victory