Fullerton T

EASTER 2017

The Forty Days of Lent are over. The Passion, Death and Resurrection of the Lamb of God have  been celebrated during Holy Week. The tomb is  now empty. The flowers symbolize the New Life that has come to the world. Jesus Christ lives! He has Risen as he said he would and his light lights up our world.  The Easter celebration is an invitation to come out out of darkness into the light of the risen Christ. In that light we see him and recognise each other as brothers and sisters in the Lord. It is that light which summons us to leave the darkness of our lives behind and all of us have some of those. As a  result of Jesus conquering death on the cross nobody and nothing can be written off as a lost cause ever again. Year after year when we celebrate Easter we hold as holy the memory of God’s great act in raising Jesus from the dead. We believe that God’s graciousness will be extended to ourselves and that our own death will not be the final word.

Our faith educates our hope that we will participate in Jesus resurrection on the last day. But a question raises itself: is our faith in the resurrection limited to remembering Jesus’ resurrection and hoping for our own on the last day? What happens between times? What about today? The resurrection of Jesus is a proclamation that this outcast from Galilee is the beloved Son of God who cannot be held in the darkness of death because someone else takes action. Jesus did not raise himself; he was raised by God his father. The truth that God raised Jesus from the dead gives hope and help to all those who want that miracle repeated in the midst of life. All of us believe that God’s work continues not least because we believe Jesus’ words: “I am the resurrection and the life.”

Our celebration of the Easter Season begins with our celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday  and continues for 50 days until Pentecost  and then it resonates throughout the rest of the year: full of gratitude for Christ’s passion, with joy in his resurrection and, strengthened by the Spirit, we continue our Christian journey this Easter time.

Holy Saturday

Today is Holy Saturday a day to pause and take stock , all is quiet as we wait watching by the tomb, after the great liturgies of the last few days and the fasting of the forty days of Lent we are Quiet in a reflective mood that is part of Holy Saturday. Today gives us  a chance to think about all that we are and what we should be as Christians while we wait and watch for the resurrection. While  we  wait we think about the  betrayal, suffering and death of Jesus as we look forward to the Easter Vigil and his resurrection. The Easter Vigil is the most distinctive liturgy of the Christian year, In several very special ways we celebrate our life in the risen Christ during the Vigil. In the expanded readings we recount the history of God’s saving actions in the lives of his people. We add new members to the Body of Christ in the sacrament of Baptism and we renew our own baptismal vows. Then in the Eucharist, we celebrate our membership of the Church, the Body of the Risen Christ. On Good Friday we celebrated Jesus life giving death on the Cross but today we stop and reflect on our own personal faith journeys in the light of the Cross of Christ as we await the great call that Christ the light in our darkness has Risen.