Holy Week and Eastertide are times of sacred journey for Christians. We walk with Christ into the true and deepest dimensions of our lives.
All life is about journey and passage. At some time in each of our lives, we are passing:
from emptiness to abundance
from loneliness to love
from exhaustion to renewal
from anxiety to peace
from burden to freedom
from confusion to understanding
from bitterness to forgiveness
from pain to healing
from mourning to remembrance
The great Feasts of Holy Week and Easter, and the reflective weeks that follow, assure us that God accompanies us in all our journeys from darkness to light. The sacredness of these days invites us to quietly name whatever darkness surrounds us and our global family, and to reach through it to the hand of God. Like a parent leading a child in from the storm, the God of Easter longs to bring our hearts home to fullness and joy.
During these coming weeks, I will continue offering reflections centered on a single word, since many of you have expressed to me an appreciation for this approach. In the archives listed on the right of the blog, you can access more extensive reflections for each day of the liturgical cycle, accumulated over the past six years.
As we begin these sacred days, let’s pray for one another. And let us pray particularly for those whose current lives are closely patterned on the sufferings of Christ that, with Him, they may be strengthened with Easter hope and courage.
A blessed and happy Easter, dear friends! May you find great confidence and hope in the fact that Christ is risen!
Let’s begin with some beautiful Easter music:
This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad. Alleluia! Psalm 118
Two very good friends once told this part of their story:
They woke up one morning beside each other as they had for fifteen years. The scent of last night’s acrid argument lingered in the corners of the room. After a few moments, he turned to her and said, “We need to learn how to love each other again. Can we try?”
Over the course of long-term relationships, the parties change. Phil and Judy wanted to remain committed to their marriage, but they found themselves strangled by years of unpruned misunderstandings. All heart commitments meet similar challenges. All dreams fray a little on their way to fulfillment.
We have followed Jesus through Holy Week on such a road. Passover Sunday filled his spirit with the fresh scent of palms and possibilities. But as the week waned, the Father led Jesus in a daunting direction. He asked his Son to pay the ultimate price for love.
Our lives too will teach us this: every ride on a palm-strewn road meets a fork toward Gethsemane. There is no true love without sacrifice. But the road does not end at the foot of the cross. Loving sacrifice lifts us to see this morning’s Easter sunrise. The life that had lain hidden in darkness now rises triumphant in our hearts.
Today, we are offered the grace to live this mystery on our own journeys. Amazingly, Easter invites us to fall in love again with God and to begin our lives anew.
As we try to live good lives in the midst of global shadows, may the Easter Light strengthen us to deepen in faith, hope and love. Yes, darkness can feel like a place of undefined danger, but it can also be the cocoon where the bulb gathers power to break forth in unimagined Life.
Poetry: An Easter Prayer – Helen Steiner Rice, not a sophisticated poem, but lovely in its simplivcity.
God, give us eyes to see the beauty of the Spring, And to behold Your majesty in every living thing.
And may we see in lacy leaves and every budding flower The Hand that rules the universe with gentleness and power.
And may this Easter grandeur that Spring lavishly imparts Awaken faded flowers of faith Lying dormant in our hearts.
And give us ears to hear, dear God the Springtime song of birds With messages more meaningful than man’s often empty words.
Telling harried human beings who are lost in dark despair ‘Be like us and do not worry for God has you in his care.’
Music: I Know That My Redeemer Liveth – George Frideric Handel
I know that my redeemer liveth And that he shall stand At the latter day, upon the earth I know that my redeemer liveth And that he shall stand At the latter day, upon the earth Upon the earth
I know that my redeemer liveth And he shall stand Stand at the latter day, upon the earth Upon the earth
And though worms destroy this body Yet in my flesh shall i see God Yet in my flesh shall i see God
I know that my redeemer liveth And though worms destroy this body Yet in my flesh shall i see God Yet in my flesh shall i see God Shall i see God
I know that my redeemer liveth For now is Christ risen from the dead The first fruits of them that sleep Of them that sleep The first fruits of them that sleep For now is Christ risen For now is Christ risen from the dead The first fruits of them that sleep
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we sing with the psalmist:
This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad. Alleluia!
Psalm 118:24
Poetry: Mary Ann Bernard – Resurrection
Long, long, long ago;
Way before this winter’s snow
First fell upon these weathered fields;
I used to sit and watch and feel
And dream of how the spring would be,
When through the winter’s stormy sea
She’d raise her green and growing head,
Her warmth would resurrect the dead.
Long before this winter’s snow
I dreamt of this day’s sunny glow
And thought somehow my pain would pass
With winter’s pain, and peace like grass
Would simply grow. (But) The pain’s not gone.
It’s still as cold and hard and long
As lonely pain has ever been,
It cuts so deep and fear within.
Long before this winter’s snow
I ran from pain, looked high and low
For some fast way to get around
Its hurt and cold. I’d have found,
If I had looked at what was there,
That things don’t follow fast or fair.
That life goes on, and times do change,
And grass does grow despite life’s pains.
Long before this winter’s snow
I thought that this day’s sunny glow,
The smiling children and growing things
And flowers bright were brought by spring.
Now, I know the sun does shine,
That children smile, and from the dark, cold, grime
A flower comes. It groans, yet sings,
And through its pain, its peace begins.
Music: An Easter Hallelujah – Cassandra and Callahan Star
Today, in Mercy, our Eastertide readings once again pull us into the full power of the Resurrection.
Just listen to Peter who stands and raises his mighty voice over the gathered crowd:
Let this be known to you, and listen to my words. You who are Israelites, hear these words. Jesus the Nazarene was a man commended to you by God … This man … you killed, using lawless men to crucify him. But God raised him up,
releasing him from the throes of death, because it was impossible for him to be held by it.
There is no fear in Peter. There is only the courage that comes from certainty in God’s power over death. This is the grace of Resurrection Faith.
Resurrection Faith is a power we intensely need in these times that so test us.
We may be severely tested like those suffering illness and loss; like those valiantly serving the suffering.Or we, like many, may simply be challenged by our self-isolation and radical disruption of routine.
In that, we may be like the disciples walking home to Emmaus. They didn’t die on Calvary. They weren’t even retained as followers of Jesus. They simply drifted away from their Hope. They were going home to a sad but comfortable dinner adequate enough to invite a stranger.
Yet they were heartbroken. The world they had loved and hoped in had been shattered. Everything they believed in appeared to be contradicted by the Cross. Most devastating of all, they were at a loss to imagine a future.
Aren’t we at least a little bit like them?
Aren’t we dazed that the reality we trusted seems to have disappeared overnight? Aren’t we too trying to figure out what we do now in the vacuum? Aren’t we too so blinded by sadness that we might fail to see God walking right beside us?
In our second reading, Peter gives us the formula to break through such blindness:
Invoke God as your Father
Remain faithful to your good works
Conduct yourselves with reverence during the time of your sojourning,
Realize that you are already ransomed from death by the precious blood of Christ
Practicing this kind of Resurrection Faith in troubled times makes us not only unafraid of death but, more importantly, unafraid of life. Because I think that is what really most cripples us – not any fear of dying, but rather our fear of fully living our life in God.
We worry about what we have to lose if we live like that, don’t we?
By jeopardizing everything most precious to us, these pandemic times make clear all that we have to lose. But they also make clear the powers in us impossible to chain: how we love, hope, serve and believe. Neither death nor pandemic has power over these living graces.
Like the Emmaus disciples, our hearts burn within us, too, with an ardent mix of longing, confusion, and stubborn trust. Like them, let us sit down with Jesus at the table of our lives. Let his patient voice speak to our souls and clear our vision. The Resurrection power of God is alive in all things. May we recognize that Power even in these seemingly contradictory times.
Because Christ rose from the dead, it is impossible for any form of death to hold us captive. On this Third Sunday of Easter, our readings invite us to truly believe that. Let’s fully accept the invitation, dear friends. Let’s live like we believe!
Music: Christ Our Hope in Life and Death – The Gettys
Lavish Mercy 