HAPPY EASTER!

HALLELUIA! The Lord is Risen. Heaven has been open to us. Sin is destroyed! Alleluia! Satan’s power taken away from him. He will not be victorious in turning us away from our God and Savior, unless, like Judas, we do not seek His mercy and love.

Pardoned, forgiven, saved by God’s love for us and His mercy toward us! Alleluiua!
Pardoned by the Lord’s love shown to us by Jesus’ obedience to the Father unto death. Alleluia!

Yet, for our sins was Jesus put to death! Alleluia, praise to our Savior and Lord!

Every woman and man, every child and adolescent, has died with Christ in baptism and will rise with Christ at the end of his or her time here on earth. Alleluia.

Alleluia. O death, where is your sting! Death, for us,  includes the resurrection, as it did for Jesus!

Sting of death, you have been dissolved into the joy of our awaiting for Jesus to return to take us with Him! Alleluia!

Today, Jesus, said to the good thief on the cross, you will be with me in Paradise. Jesus will say the same thing to you and I when we are about to be released from death. Alleluia!

Ever mindful of God’s unconditional love for us, we, too, await our resurrection into eternal life! Alleluia!

Remember that you have been ransomed from sin by Jesus’ death and resurrection! Alleluia!

Amazed? Why?

In both of today’s readings, Acts 3: 11-26 and Luke 24: 35-48, Luke asks the same question. When Jesus heals the crippled man through Peter and John, they ask the people: “Why are you amazed at this, and why do you look so intently at us as if we had made him walk by our own power or piety?”  In the Gospel, while the disciples from Emmaus explain how they recognized Jesus, Jesus suddenly appears in their midst and says: “Peace be with you.” The disciples and the eleven apostles are taken aback. Jesus says to them: “Why are you troubled?  …[W]hy do questions arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have.”

Yes, why am I surprised when Jesus appears in the person of a physician, a nurse, a teacher, a parent, a public servant, loving, comforting, healing, meeting the unmet need of a desperate, grieving individual? Why do positive responses from people pondering a distressing situation leave me startled? Why am I discombobulated when a little child responds to a tragedy in a way that awakens the hearts of millions around the world to help Veterans of the Iraq war or victims of natural disasters or a child battered with cancer whose family needs comfort and financial aid?

Do I not realize that Jesus is risen? that Jesus is alive in each of us? that Jesus works through us in the same way that He worked among the sick and the lame, the deaf and the blind, the dead and the demonized when he physically walked this earth?