Happy Easter, Wesolego Alleluja, Felices Pascuas, Feliz Pascoa and Bon Fet Pak! No matter how you say it, I hope the Easter season brings joy to your heart and a smile to your face.
I pray that, like me, you have and are experiencing Easter JOY! We get 50 days to pull out all the stops and celebrate Jesus’ love for us. This Easter Vigil, I was so fortunate to celebrate with our newly baptized and newly received candidates at Saints Philip and James Parish in St. James, NY. The excitement and joy I experienced with them during their preparation, and especially during our time together on Holy Saturday, was inspirational. Their joy was so evident I couldn’t wait to share it with everyone I met.
Our pastor, Fr. Tom Haggerty, saw it on their faces and in their eyes as well. I thought I would share some of the inspiring words he shared with all of us during the Vigil:
“According to the New Testament, something unheard of, unimagined, unprecedented happened the first Easter morning. It wasn’t just that the disciples felt, “Well, perhaps, maybe we can go on.” No! The Jesus they had seen brutally tortured and buried was again alive. Not in some spiritual sense but actually bodily alive!
“These first century Jews utilized a framework they were familiar with and began to say that the Creator God in whom they believed had begun a new creation.
“Matthew, Mark, Luke and John do not say that Jesus was alive again and that one day we will be with Him. That is precisely what they don’t say. Rather, Jesus is Risen and therefore new creation has begun and therefore we are given a job... phrased as God’s larger plan to bring heaven and earth together as one... to go out preaching repentance (a new way of thinking) and the awesome power of forgiveness.”
We are living and creating in the now. How exciting! And, the excitement continues as Mary Magdalene receives her mission to go tell the good news to the apostles and others. How do you picture yourself in this scene? Can you experience the joy, the new creation, the now, the mission? Remember, you have 50 days, so keep on celebrating and creating a forgiving, awesome world!
Till next week,
Sister Theresita
