EASTER GREETINGS
The joy of the Risen Lord be with all of you.
In this Easter, I pray that all of us may meet the Risen Lord in the most familiar places of our daily life, in our family, in our community and in our work.
In Easter we celebrate life: the life of Jesus, as He rose from the dead. We are people who seek life, we hang on to life when it is threatened, and yet many of us have a hard time to believe in the resurrection of Jesus and in the resurrection Jesus has prepared for us. The foundation of our faith is: the Lord is risen and He will raise us up.
The Resurrection account emphasizes the fact that it was on the "first day" of the week the disciples discovered that their Lord had risen. The "first day" means much more than Sunday, the first day of the week. For us, the "first day" is heavily charged with symbolism, because it puts us in the context of the creation story of Genesis. We recall how in the beginning darkness covered the earth, "Then God said: be light made. And light was made... God called the light "day" and the darkness "night". And there was evening and morning, the "first day" (Genesis 1,1-5).
So, the "first day" is a creation expression, signifying the beginning of everything. It was only natural for the Evangelists to use the same words, "first day" together with the word "dawn" to communicate the real meaning of Christ's resurrection, as the beginning of God's new creation.
WHAT IS EASTER ALL ABOUT?
-It is the good news that the Risen Jesus is in our midst right now.
-It is the good news that Jesus has triumphed over evil and death, and so will we.
-It is the good news that nothing can destroy us anymore: not suffering, not pain, not sorrow, not sin, not even death itself.
May the Risen Jesus "appear" before us as an empowering Lord who is right here for us every single day in our successes and also in our failures; in our resting and also in our tiredness; in our waiting for a new beginning; in the midst of our deciding; in our feasting and even in our weeping.
We don't have to wait until we die to share in the power of the Resurrection. Liturgically, every Sunday is an Easter celebration. Existentially, everyday can be for us a mini-Easter celebration.
We should try to live a risen life, a life of faith and love and hope in union with Jesus, our risen Lord.