Author: WebDept ParishAdmin

While the phrase, “This changes everything” could be seen as overused or an over exaggeration, in today’s Gospel no phrase could be more apt. However, in the strange and mysterious ways of God, there is an element that remains unchanged, even while the whole course of human history has been rerouted. 

Today, we hear the story of Mary Magdalen’s encounter with the risen Jesus just outside the tomb. In her distress, when she first hears Jesus she doesn’t look at Him. She assumes He is the gardener. Only when He calls her by name does she look up to see the resurrected Christ. 

By name He calls her. Just as during Jesus’ previous ministry, He intimately knows each one of His followers. He calls them, singles them out of the crowd, to come and follow Him. Even after going through His Passion, even after the mystery of His Resurrection, Jesus, the Good Shepherd, still does not lose sight of one member of His flock. Nothing has changed. 

And yet as we know, everything changed. Without speaking in a parable, Jesus identifies His disciples as His “brothers.” He claims them as siblings, explaining that they would now share one Father, one God. This statement makes it clear that this relationship is changing, it has been transformed. 

As baptized Christians, we are given a claim to this status of sibling. We are sons and daughters of God, brothers and sisters of Jesus. We share one Father and can pray the prayer Jesus taught us with renewed meaning. “Our Father” is not a theoretical statement, or some lofty metaphor. This is my Father, and your Father. We are made into a new family. No one we encounter can truly be a stranger, for everyone we meet is another brother, another sister, within God’s extensive family. 

We are just beginning the Easter celebrations. Just as Jesus instructed Mary to go and announce what she had seen and heard, so too are we called. We are called to share the Good News with our brothers and sisters and to live our lives in such a way that they can see something is different. We too have been transformed. The Resurrection changes everything.

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It is fairly common for us to hear in popular culture and public conservations someone being told, “It’s not all about you” when they are perceived as being selfish, self-centered or self-serving. It’s a very public and definite rebuke, a complete put-down. Get over yourself, it says. Think about someone else for once, it implies.

And then we come to Holy Week and Easter. Jesus Christ is risen today! Alleluia! He is risen indeed! Praise be to God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! A reflection on all the drama, all the emotion, all the theology of the past few days, and one thing that arises – a little bit unexpected, quite honestly – is that all of it, Christ’s passion, death and resurrection, are, in fact, all about us.

We are sinners. We fail God and others. God in his infinite power and majesty could do anything at all about it – forget us, leave us to flounder, even destroy us and start over. Yet God decides in his infinite love and mercy instead to save us. The incarnation, the loving act of sending his only Son into this world to be a ransom for our sins, would never have to happen if not for our sinfulness. 

And Jesus submits to the will of the Father, emptying himself and becoming human. He is born as we are born, grows as we grow, lives like us in all ways, yet he does not sin. His commitment is completely to the Father, giving us the example of how we should live. He teaches us, he heals us, he gives us his very self in the Eucharist at the Last Supper on Holy Thursday. He does it all for us.

And we reject him. He is betrayed, arrested, tried, falsely accused, falsely convicted. He is tortured and ridiculed, crucified and killed. And he humbly accepts it all. He who never had sin takes on our sins and is killed for them. His death is all about his love for us.

But it’s not the end. Two thousand years later, we repeat it almost as a matter of fact, that Jesus rose from the dead. But think about that! He was dead, but then he was no longer dead! No wonder his disciples couldn’t comprehend what that meant when he told them it would occur. And it happened for us, that we, too, might have everlasting life with God in heaven. Because God loves us so much that he willed this all for our salvation. 

Let us latch onto that this Easter and always with rejoicing and praise. Jesus became man, suffered, died and rose again, all for us. And it happened because God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, loves us in spite of us. God, who does not need us in the slightest, has chosen to make it all about us with His infinite love. Let us live on in that love, taking it and spreading it and making it all about someone else, just as God has done with us. Happy Easter! Alleluia!

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Holy Saturday…

A day of quiet and calm. A day of intimacy and hope.

A day when all creation sighed in exhaustion after witnessing the sorrowful and tragic events of Calvary the day before.

A day when the earth trembled as it held the sacred Body of the Savior as it lay in the silent darkness.

A day of waiting….

The liturgy on Holy Saturday, the magnificent Easter Vigil, teaches us the divine art of waiting. We wait in the dark around the Easter Fire, usually shivering in the early spring evening for the service to begin. We wait as the Paschal candle precedes us into a darkened church and our tiny candles gradually become a sea of lights punctuating the shadows. We wait for everyone to take their place before the lovely Exultet is proclaimed in song. And then finally we wait for the reading of the Gospel of the resurrection as the Liturgy of the Word “takes us by the hand” in the words of Benedict XVI and walks us through the whole trajectory of salvation history. If your parish proclaims all the readings for Holy Saturday Liturgy there will be seven Old Testament readings and one from the Epistles in the New Testament.

As these readings follow upon each other, one after another, I feel that in some way I take my place in the long centuries of creation waiting for redemption as I look through the “scrapbook” of memories and miracles, of suffering and assurance that is the heartbeat of the Liturgy of the Word of the Easter Vigil. Story after story is read from creation through the promise made to Abraham and the miraculous freeing of the Hebrew slaves as they raced across the path made by the Lord for them through the Red Sea, to the prophecies of how God has chosen Israel, making with them a covenant, inviting them to fidelity, through to God sorrowing over his unfaithful people to whom he promises a new heart and a new spirit. 

Every baptized person stands in this arc of salvation, this mysterious longing of the Father’s heart for our return to him. We are baptized into Christ’s death and rise with him.

In the Easter Vigil, the readings assure us with the unmistakable echoes of a Father’s heart: “I love you. All of this was for love of you. I have always stood by my covenanted people and I will do so forever. I will stand by you. Even if you walk away. Even if you are weak and wobbly in your love for me, I will love you. You do not need to be afraid.”

And lastly, the community breaks out with joy as we celebrate the Baptisms of those who have waited many months of preparation. I always feel more complete as we welcome them among us, each of us holding them spiritually to our hearts.

If you have never been to an Easter Vigil, someday give yourself that gift. Don’t wait any longer!

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