THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER "B"

THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER “B”

A large crowd of more than 500 eyewitnesses saw the risen Jesus Christ at the same time. The Apostle Paul records this event in 1 Corinthians 15:6. He states that most of these men and women were still alive when he wrote this letter, about 55 A.D.  Today, psychologists say it would be impossible for a large crowd of people to have had the same hallucination at once. Smaller groups also saw the risen Christ, such as the apostles. The hallucination theory is further debunked because after the Ascension of Jesus into heaven, sightings of him stopped.

 When the risen Christ appeared to Paul on the Damascus Road, Paul became Christianity's most determined missionary. What could make a person willingly accept—even welcome—such hardships? Christians believe the conversion of Paul came about because he encountered Jesus Christ who had risen from the dead.

Countless people have died for Jesus, absolutely certain that the resurrection of Christ is an historical fact.  Down through the centuries, thousands more have died for Jesus because they believed the resurrection is true. Even today, people suffer persecution because they have faith that Christ rose from the dead. An isolated group may give up their lives for a cult leader, but Christian martyrs have died in many lands, for nearly 2,000 years, believing Jesus conquered death to give them eternal life.

PRAYER (Catherine Hooper)

How can I tell of such love to me?

You made me in your image and hold me in the palm of your hand, your cords of love, strong and fragile as silk bind and hold me.

Rich cords, to family and friends, music and laughter echoing in memories, the light dancing on the water, hills rejoicing.

Cords that found me hiding behind carefully built walls and led me out,

love that heard my heart break and despair and rescued me,

love that overcame my fears and doubts and released me.

The questions and burdens I carry you take, to leave my hands free – to hold yours, and others, free to follow your cords as they move and swirl in the breeze, free to be caught up in the dance of your love, finding myself surrendering to you. How can I tell of such love? How can I give to such love?

I am, here am I.

22^nd. April 2012

The readings today are full of Easter excitement. Peter is speaking to a crowd of Jewish spectators who have come to witness the man whom Peter and John had cured from paralysis. He had been begging for money, but the two apostles could not give him silver or gold, but rather a recovery of his mobility through the Holy Spirit.
Peter begins his speech with a kind of Scripture lesson. He reminds them that the God of their religious fathers, the Patriarchs, has revealed Jesus to be the servant of the Scriptures. Peter reviews how the listeners had been complicit in the handing over of this Servant to His death. Peter ends with a comforting call to repentance and life offered through Jesus Whose death and resurrection was written in their very own Holy Scriptures. He invites his listeners to drown themselves in the forgiveness of Christ, Who before He was born, was buried in their own prophetic writings. This Christ, the Servant of Suffering, once buried in a tomb, now is alive and giving life to all who believe.
The Gospel of Luke has its own Easter event. Two disciples had been taking their exit-walk from Jerusalem back to Emmaus. Jesus had met them, responded to their invitation to stay with them and while eating with them was known to them in the “breaking of the bread”. Then Jesus vanishes, but their hearts were so flooded with joy that they decided to return and reveal to the others what they had experienced.
What we hear in today’s Gospel is the rest of the story. While the disciples are relating their being accompanied, (literally) by Jesus, the very same Jesus appears in the midst of the group and extends “peace” to all. Terrified and thinking they were seeing a ghost, the assembly has a real Easter dinner. Jesus, knowing their doubtfulness, invites them to touch His body and then asks for something to eat. Luke is greatly aware that his Greek readers were skeptical about such a thing as rising from the dead. He inserts this part of the story to comfort such skeptics. Jesus is offered some fish and eats it as a sign that He is truly Himself. Ghosts don’t have bodies nor do they eat.
Jesus concludes this appearance with conclusive evidence from the writings of Scripture. The law, the Prophets and the Psalms all speak of the Servant having to suffer, die and rise. This Good News is meant to affirm Jesus as the Messiah and that forgiveness of sins is to be preached from the top of the Jerusalem Hill to the ends of the earth. Those who have seen Jesus’ risen Body are now to become that Body by living His life and giving His life to the world.

THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER "A"

THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER

Cycle “A”: Luke 24, 13 – 35

There is a story about the great Christian writer, C.S. Lewis. At the age of 18, he was an atheist. Wanting to study at Oxford he took a train. He came out of the railway station on the wrong side and unawares he walked away from the centre of Oxford through the suburb of Botley. It was only when he found himself confused and in the countryside that he turned round and checked, and then saw Oxford behind him. Later on C.S. Lewis declared that this incident was a description of his whole life and of our relationship with God. Today’s Gospel seems to support this view. Our hearts go out to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, being sorry for themselves over the suffering and death of the one they thought of as the long-awaited Messiah. They were commiserating with each other. So deep is their grief that when Jesus appears they are too caught up in their feelings to recognise him. Jesus engages them in conversation but has to face a wall of words. They barely stop to draw breath. Jesus does well to slip a word in edgeways. Something in this unexpected fellow traveller fascinates them and they beg him to stay and eat. And the peculiar thing is that from being their guest, Jesus becomes their host.

For these disciples on the way to Emmaus relationship with the risen Lord is deepened in a long-hand round about way. We often have to go “all round the house” in order to get near to the One we seek. Through hard and seemingly unrewarding labour, we finally reach fulfilment, satisfaction. Anything truly important in life, truly worth while, usually requires more than a little effort and perseverance. The doorway to real love, real relationship, real joy, the doorway to God, opens where we are not expecting it.

During Eastertide we celebrate the event that is the key to our lives, our loves, our relationships: Jesus Christ, the Alpha and Omega, Lord of all, risen from the dead. Jesus is the assurance of the ultimate triumph of life, love, hope, of all that is positive and life-giving, over death, sin, selfishness, despair and cynicism. Jesus has paid the ransom to free us from the useless way of life of selfishness to which, unhappily, we often return. And yet the doorway to the true life keeps opening unexpectedly. Mary Magdalene thought she was with the gardener that first Sunday morning. The disciples thought they saw someone taking an early morning stroll on the beach. Today two disciples chat with a fellow traveller on the road. A hauntingly beautiful story. The story of walking a new way towards Christ on a slow journey, one in which we are so often unaware of his presence beside us. Many a time we have had to take our place in the crowd and to learn that God’s way is not ours. At times we have wrong ideas about where God is to be found and how God should act, and how he is acting in our lives. We can miss God’s plan for our lives, because life has bruised, wounded, broken us, and blinded us. In today’s Gospel God teaches us that all these areas of our life have to undergo the Paschal Mystery. On the road to Emmaus we discover that there is no neat, easy relationship with Christ. Neat easy relationships are superficial, not real.

The Lord walks alongside us, though we haven’t the eyes to see him because of our disappointment and brokenness over the things we still cling to. If I keep yearning for what used to be in my life, I will miss the joys in which he makes himself present in my life today. But the brokenness and disappointments are not unimportant  -  they prepare us to see him, to have our eyes opened. Jesus asked the two people, “What matters are you discussing as you walk along ?” Christ wants to hear our version of his story, to hear out our disappointments with his story in our lives. We may look back on difficult times, and though we wouldn’t want to go through it all again, something good is being worked out -  a Presence there. And were it not for those difficult times, we would not be where or who we are today.  Holy Week, from Thursday to Sunday, quite simply and solemnly means that in the life and death of Christ all our lives are summed up. With the beautifully touching Emmaus story inside us, we can begin to expect the unexpected. But we may be absolutely sure that, come what may, the Father of Jesus will never allow our lives to be exposed to futility; our lives will not have been lived in vain.

PRAYER: (Janet Morley)

O God, whose greeting we miss

and whose departure we delay;

make our hearts burn with insight

on our ordinary road;

that, as we grasp you

 in the broken bread,

we may also let you go,

and return to speak

your word of life

in the name of Christ.

Amen.

SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER "B"

SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER

Cycle “B”: John 20, 19 –31

There is that interesting story of a young detective and the beautiful lady. It was reported that one night someone knocked on the door of the lady’s house and then killed her by firing a shotgun into her face as she opened the door. The young detective was called in to solve the murder of this beautiful young woman. For the next few days, the detective spends all of his time in the lady’s house, checking everything she owns. He examines her photographs and even reads her personal diaries, hoping to find a clue that might lead to her murderer. Then something peculiar begins to happen. The detective finds himself emotionally involved. He finds himself falling in love with the lady, falling in love with a dead person. One night he is in the lady’s house again when he hears a click in the door. A key is turning in the lock. He draws his gun trying to steady his hand as he turns to face the intruder. The door opens, and there stands the beautiful lady!

“But, but, you’re supposed to be dead.”

“No, I’m not,” she replies. “Somebody else is dead; the woman who occupied my house while I was away on vacation.”

Needless to say, they fall in love.... and the happy ending.

Today’s Gospel finds the disciples cowering in the upper room, deeply troubled since they are the known associates of an executed troublemaker. They too could end up on crosses if the enemies of Jesus widened the net. Heads together over the tables, how are they going to handle the crisis? And here he is, he comes imperceptibly and stands among them saying, “Peace be with you,” and wordlessly shows them his hands and his side. He is not telling them off or reproaching them. The marks of his bloody Passion are there, but so is he, standing and smiling, not a resuscitated corpse, but energetic, strong, serene. “The disciples were filled with joy,” says today’s Gospel. Note well, their danger has not decreased, the problem is still there, but it has shrunk into proportion because Jesus is there. Where Jesus is, he occupies our attention. We ask at Mass that God will deliver us from anxiety. Anxiety is often a worse scourge than the thing we’re anxious about. The presence of Jesus brings peace. It is a sense of well-being at the very root of our being, which can endure all kinds of suffering. It is a gift of the Risen Lord. If we really believe in him, let us claim it.

The second gift is forgiveness. Peace is not a hundred miles away from absolution, forgiveness. Forgiveness of sin is available in the very midst of us.

The third gift is faith. Poor Thomas is no more unbelieving than the rest of the apostles, but he gets saddled with the reputation. Jesus treats his doubt with a great deal of compassion, even with humour.  Thomas had told his fellows that seeing is believing. And it was Christ who taught that believing is seeing. In a millisecond, his faith has taken a quantum leap. While he was the last to believe in the Risen Christ, he was the first to make that unqualified cry, “My Lord and my God.”

In today’ secular climate, faith is a difficult virtue. The climate is one of systematic doubt.  Faith however means believing things not because a teacher says them or a priest or the Pope, for that matter, but because God says them. Then we can relax. A strong faith sees the invisible, believes the incredible and receives the impossible.  St. John wants us to be men and women of faith, which is quite different from encyclopaedic knowledge. You can know the Bible backwards in half a dozen languages, and be a professor of religion in a prestigious university, and still not believe a word of it. Belief is what matters. Belief is open to people with very little learning, as much as to those of great learning. By writing the Gospel, St. John means to clear a path for God’s gift to us whoever we are, the gift of faith.

If we take this Gospel seriously and beg the Risen Lord to transform us according to his pattern, we will become people of deep underlying trust and calm, rejoicing in the forgiveness of our sins, and tranquilly sure of the goodness of God, of the closeness of Jesus, and the power of the Spirit. A good way to be.  You remember that line from the Easter vigil proclamation:

“Of this night scripture says, ‘The night will be clear as day; it will become my light, my joy.’”

I would like to pronounce this invocation on you, composed by David Adam, pone time vicar of Lindisfarne, where St. Cuthbert lived in the 7^th. century.

The Lord of the empty tomb, the conqueror of gloom,

come to you.

The Lord in the garden walking, the Lord to Mary talking,

come to you.

The Lord in the upper room, dispelling fear and doom,

come to you.

The Lord on the road to Emmaus, the Lord giving hope to Thomas,

come to you.

The Lord appearing on the shore, giving us life for evermore,

come to you.

EASTERING PAIN

EASTERING  PAIN 

The bitter cup is emptied,

The cruel death defied.

Hell’s haunts in mercy visited

That faith might spring again

This Eastertide.

Like sudden dawn in tropic night,

Like children’s laughter

Breaking on the frost,

Like Spring unloosing Winter’s blood  -

This Easter Day

Is brimmed with life

And drunk with light.

Strange ways of God,

That He

Should in tenderness

Take hold of me.

                                    A. S. Lewis

UNDENIABLE FACT

         Jesus was dead. He wasn’t in a faint.; he was dead. And then his body went missing. And the writings are such as to make us say it wasn’t a massive hoax. After all, what have the followers to gain by keeping up a massive hoax. It just brought them pain, torture and death. They became changed people. One minute they are betrayers, deniers, and fugitives; the next minute they’re saying their leader is alive and they’ll go any length for him. And they were sensible people, practised in daily living and work. And then Jesus appeared. He could not be pinned down. Rather, by his “descent into hell”, he had entered the heart of the world, the essence of reality, and turned it inside out. That is why the earth shook and the boulders  split, not being able to contain the Lord of creation who transcended it. Jesus is Lord by nature and conquest ! And the writings about his appearances were from a time when witnesses were still alive and could have been questioned. So, the facts are written down, and in pretty undramatic language so as not to work up an emotion but to call for faith, becoming part of the lives who hear and read them. These facts have been handed down and scrupulously guarded by a community that hasn’t shattered in 2,000 years. On the basis of those facts, we in 1998 form one community in an unbroken line with the believers of the 1st. century, to the very men and women who saw and heard and lived with Christ.

BECKONING ONWARDS

                        The vocabulary of “re-surrection” can be wrongly taken to imply a mere “return” or “coming back” to life, as if Jesus were simply resuscitated or reanimated after his death and burial. That would be to forget how his resurrection meant his entering into an awesome new stage of glory. Jesus has gone through that human experience we call death into a transcendent existence for which there is no adjective in the human dictionary. Christ’s Resurrection hides a meaning that is just beyond us, and what we now perceive is only through a smoked glass. But precisely because it is just ahead of us, it beckons onwards, since we are dealing with the God of Exodus and infinite possibilities, who keeps bringing out of his store ever new things. Lithe and nimble, this Resurrection God confronts our cynical and tired hearts, trapped in tragedy in the middle and muddle of our personal lives. “I’m doing a new thing”, he says. “Come on, courage. Live now in this newness, in this hope as an eternal being. Lay hold on loving, and it will be your crown eternally.”

WOUNDED HEALERS

                        Even after the Resurrection we prefer the keep the cross of the wounded Christ in our churches, for we are a community of wounded and hurt people, needing the Wounded Healer. The church as the re-presentation of Jesus has the mission of walking in the midst of a world wracked with  pain and obsessed with its own self-destructiveness and sin. Having overcome death himself, Jesus knows better than any of us that no human problem  - neither A.I.D.S., nor the bomb, nor the blighting of the environment  -  need paralyse us. He assures us: “I AM the First and the Last and the One who lives.”

EASTERING PAIN

                        To separate the cross from the resurrection is to destroy the central mystery of our faith. The experience of many generations has affirmed the affinity between our pain and the pain of Jesus. Jesus does not always show us the way out of the disappointments of life nor provide an explanation of their meaning. He does, however, fill our suffering with his presence. Suffering  which we refuse to integrate into our lives  works out negatively. This suffering can have many faces: health problems, addictions, career setbacks, political changes, humiliations and betrayals, our spiritual mediocrity, and a host of others. Our disowned negative experiences can stifle our love, hollow our generosity, affect our honesty, and trap us in petty self-absorption. The cross of Christ, perceived in unity with the resurrection, offers  great strength to take on the inevitable and render it fruitful. Thus assumed into the Paschal Mystery, our suffering is also our Eastering.

SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER

SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER

John 20, 19 – 31

This chapter of St. John’s Gospel presents the different reactions to the great event of the Resurrection: the perplexity of Peter, the instant faith of the Beloved Disciple, Mary Magdalene’s need to see and hear, the stubborn refusal of Thomas. These accounts accent the fact that the risen Lord was truly Jesus of Nazareth, the same yet different.

The disciples receive the Holy Spirit at this second coming of Jesus; the future is already present. Here is an encounter with Jesus and the believing community. Jesus re-creates his community by breathing on them the Holy Spirit; and thereby the believing community also becomes a healing community.

The doubting Thomas needed healing very much. He was not with the happy disciples; he was still struck with the crucifixion, which only confirmed his earlier pessimism. The Passion was stuck in his gizzard, making him retreat into a self-created loneliness. Jesus would draw him out of his disappointment and loneliness. Once in the group, Thomas is invited to touch the wounds, as he had demanded in his stubborn isolation; and touching the wounds, he is led into the fresh expanse of the resurrection. Thomas’ own wounds are healed, and with profound conviction he makes his profession of faith, “My Lord and my God.” The wounds of Good Friday had become the joyous bells of Easter. From now on, Thomas would also be a healer, with faith in God’s power and confidence in himself. Fortunately for him, Thomas had the good sense to accept the invitation of Jesus, “Come and touch my wounds.”

Let me tell you the story of a learned Pundit, who lived on a tiny river island. People from all over the world came by land and sea to hear his words of faith and wisdom. Every morning a little village girl would bring him a pot of milk. But she began to arrive late, which annoyed the learned man very much. “Why can’t you come in time ?” he asked. The girl explained, “Because I have to cross the river by boat. Sometimes the boat is not there; sometimes the boat is there, but not the boatman.” “You silly girl,” said the holy Pundit, “don’t you make excuses. You ought to know that people cross the oceans reciting God’s name to come here. What’s crossing a small river. Now go away and don’t be late !” The little milkmaid said, “Yes, Punditji, I’ll do as you say.” The next morning the little milkmaid was on the dot. “How did you make it ? Was the boat on time ?”  “There was no boat,” she said, “so walked it.” “You walked on the water ? Don’t be absurd, girl.” “No, Punditji, I did as you said, cross the water reciting God’s name ! Here’s your milk, and I’m going back the same way, reciting God’s name.” As she was about to go through the door, she turned and said, “And Punditji, you can do the same.” Late that evening that holy man went to the river’s edge, recited God’s name, stepped into the river and fell in ! He didn’t believe in the faith he preached to others.

Could it be that like the learned Pundit we don’t believe with the heart what we proclaim with our lips ? I suppose some of us are like that: we don’t practice what we preach. That’s why we get gallstones, kidney stones and headstones ! Often we are divided in ourselves. Part of us believes, but part of us battles with doubts, Our faith is constantly under attack. We live in a culture that believes only what it can see and touch. Actually our faith is more robust than we think. Sometimes shaken and wounded by suffering and disappointment, but still there.

 Jesus invites us to touch and feel him and be reassured.

The great St. Teresa of Avila said, “When this spouse (Our Lord) is pleased to caress souls, the soul seems to be suspended in those divine arms and rest on that divine side; she does nothing but delight….caressed by him. She does not know what to compare it to, except the caressing of a mother that tenderly loving her infant, nurses and fondles him.”

We must take note of our feelings, listen to them, and allow God’s word to speak into them. Opening up to God’s healing touch brings about the welcome integration of body, mind and spirit, which energizes and inspires.

PRAYER (Michael John Radford Counsell)

Risen Christ, you came to your disciples in the evening of the first day of the week. Forgive us when, like Thomas, we hug our doubts and worries to ourselves. Grant us such a hunger for the fellowship of those who believe in you, that no excuses may prevent us from meeting together in the evening stillness. Then may we find you standing among us, to strengthen us and send us out in your service; for are alive and reign, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever. Amen.

EASTER SUNDAY "B"

EASTER SUNDAY "B"

            When Peter entered the tomb, he saw the linen cloths lying. The napkin which had been on Jesus’ head was not lying with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself. You remember that when Lazarus came out of the tomb, his hands and feet were bound with bandages, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Lazarus came out in his grave clothes because he would need them again. He was not resurrected to glory, but rather returned to normal life. Unlike Lazarus, Jesus has no need of the linen cloths. Jesus stepped out of them and left them aside. Christ is risen and embodies a new and radical transformation. Before his Resurrection, he was present only in Galilee. Now in his fresh new existence he is present to the whole world of creation and has changed history forever.

            The beloved disciple looked into the tomb early, while it was still dark. Now it is very unlikely that a visit to the tomb would have been made in the dark. So we look for a symbolic meaning. You remember how Judas left the Upper Room of the Last Supper in order to betray Jesus. The Gospel says he walked into the night, into darkness. Mary Magdalene was still in the dark. She wept in shock and sadness. Later when she would meet Jesus in the garden, he would allow her to recognise him and she would see and believe and call him Lord. The Easter festival calls us to be like Mary Magdalene: to be called out of darkness, to see with the eyes of faith and to believe. One day two ladies were standing in front of the magnificent cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris looking at the structure with admiration and wonderment. One asked the other, “Why can’t we build structures like this anymore?” Her friend answered, “The people who built this had faith. Today we have no faith, only opinions; and you can’t build a cathedral with opinions.”

 This is our faith that has reverberated in this community that has never disintegrated in 2000 years since the first Easter.

            There is a deeper reason why the Resurrection is the foundation of our faith. Christ’s resurrection is the resurrection of man. Today, sin has been destroyed. And his victory over sin is final and definitive. As we look into our hearts we often don’t feel very dead to sin  -  in fact, it seems very much alive and kicking ! The more reason why we should desire and develop our union with Jesus Christ.

 In virtue of our union with him, we too, through him, with him and in him have died to sin and risen to newness of life. The Resurrection of Christ is the resurrection of man. This man who has been renewed and transformed is no disembodied spirit, but man in his concrete reality, his total human existence. The resurrection of man is, in effect, the renewal of the whole world  -  of the world that man shapes and that, in turn, shapes man; the day-to-day world around us in its multiple human dimensions  -  religious, cultural, socio-economic. Because the Risen Christ is the New Man, redeemed mankind is the “new creation”, in which freedom and dignity are respected, a society rebuilt on justice, honesty and considerateness for the needs of the other.

            Jesus stands as the most radical challenge as well as the deepest source in inspiration to modern men and women, thirsting for integrity, yet tragically unable to achieve it. Put them in contact with Jesus and they will discover that the Risen Christ alone is fully our Peace and Joy.

PRAYER

(Brother Roger of Taize)

If you were not risen, Lord Christ,

to whom would we go

to discover a radiance of the face of God ?

If you were not risen, we would not be together

seeking your communion.

We would not find in your presence forgiveness,

wellspring of a new beginning.

If you were not risen, where would be draw

the energy to follow you

right to the end of our existence,

for choosing you again and again ?

St. Thomas’ Church,

Calcutta

EASTER SUNDAY

EASTER SUNDAY

Can you imagine the joy and even the thrill that Jesus experienced as the fresh life of the Holy Spirit quickened his clammy and rigid body, and he burst forth from the cold, dark, silent tomb of death as a risen man triumphant over sin and death ? Can you imagine the divine joy of God the Father as he raised his Son to life, and the divine joy of the Holy Spirit through whom the Father raised his Son ? When Jesus appeared to his apostles after the resurrection, we can perceive the excitement in his voice: “What’s troubling you ? And why do questions rise in your hearts ? Look at my hands and feet, it’s me. Handle me, and see, a spirit hasn’t any flesh and bones as you can feel I have. It’s me, myself.” Those words were addressed to the disciples all right, but also words that Jesus jubilantly spoke to himself. “It is I. I am alive. I am risen. I am not a ghost. I have once more bone and muscle. I am a glorious man !” Indeed, no one was more joyful than Jesus himself, and it was this joy that quite naturally he wanted to convey to and share with his mother, his disciples, and us today. The Mother’s sorrow was now a memory, the recalling of which produced no chill or shiver. Now there was only fulfilment as he held her close to his muscular body of glistening bronze. From now on his disciples can place their hands into his wounds, fragrant as fresh roses in the dew of dawn. Now they can fall down and embrace his feet and cover them with their kisses of adoring love. My dear friends, what would you do if Jesus appeared before you fresh and glorious from death ? No constraints or restrictions. You can seize him and tear him to pieces, break him and eat him; he remains in one piece, whole and entire. He is all yours. In his 2nd. letter to the Corinthians, in chapter 3, vs. 18, St. Paul declares that “we are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory into another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” How does the Holy Spirit swallow us up so that we can live by the power of Jesus’ resurrection ? It takes place through our daily life of prayer and penance, and it transpires especially with the Eucharist. When we receive Jesus in the Eucharist, we do not receive his pre-resurrected body and blood. No. We receive the Risen body and Risen blood of Jesus. To live out our daily lives empowered by Jesus’ resurrection means that we live a life worthy of our calling, a life in conformity with Christ. In his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul wrote, “Therefore, putting away falsehood, let everyone speak the truth with his neighbour, for we are members one of another…Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may impart grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption” (Eph. 4, 25 –32). Something happened that Easter morning that made our bad Fridays good and our lives a risk worth taking. The Easter Sunday Sequence from the Roman Missal sums up the entire scene in beautiful language: “Death and Life were locked together in astounding struggle. Life’s Captain died; now he reigns, no more to die.” Henry Van Dyck has penned the line: “Some people are so afraid of death that they never begin to live.” Hopefully, that will never be said of anyone of us here. For faith in Christ knows that the best has yet to come.

 PRAYER: (St. Bonaventure, 1217-1274; 57 years) Rise, beloved Christ, like a dove rising high in the sky, its white feathers glistening in the sun. Let me see your purity of soul. Like a sparrow keeping constant watch over its nest of little ones, watch over us day and night, guarding us against all physical and spiritual danger. Like a turtledove hiding its offspring from all attackers, hide us from the attacks of the devil. Like a swallow, swooping down towards the earth, swoop down upon us and touch us with your life-giving Spirit.