13-Apr-2014 Dear Friend,
Easter is truly the Lord's Day and our day as well! At Easter we are reminded that God desires to restore humanity and all of creation to our original blessing. Our God is God of the living and he wants us to be fully alive but often we look for life among the dead. We hold on to the past and believe more in dying than in living. As we celebrate the resurrection may we discover that our God is a God of hope and New Life. Wishing you a Blessed and Joyful Easter! -Fr. Jude Sunday Reflections: Easter Sunday He has risen as he said! Alleluia! 20-Apr-2014 Readings: Acts 10: 34, 37-43; Colossians 3: 1-4; John 20: 1-9 The first reading from the Acts, is part of an early sermon of St. Peter on the feast of Pentecost, his very first after the resurrection. He tells us how he is a witness of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Without the resurrection Jesus' life and ours would be a total failure, with the resurrection every moment of His ministry has a new meaning and every moment of our own can take on a new significance. Peter in this sermon reminds his listeners that Jesus is Lord of all and that his message is a message of hope and peace. He emphasizes that every believer is called to be a witness of the Lord's life, death and resurrection. We are called to be witnesses of the resurrection, but the glory of the resurrection is realized in us only when we have accepted the many crosses that come our way leading us to new life. Broken and made more beautiful A story is told of an eastern village that, through the centuries, was known for its exquisite pottery. Especially striking were its urns; high as tables, wide as chairs, they were admired around the globe for their strong form and delicate beauty. Legend has it that when each urn was apparently finished, there was one final step. The artist broke it - and then put it back together with gold filigree. An ordinary urn was then transformed into a priceless work of art. What seemed finished wasn't, until it was broken Steve Goodier The Gospel begins with Mary Magdalene coming to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus. She knows the stone has to be rolled away, and she also knows that she cannot do it by herself. Maybe she believes that the Lord will provide and he will take care of it all- and he does! Maybe Mary's attitude should be a great encouragement for us all. We can't remove the boulder that blocks us and prevents us from bursting forth into new life. But the Lord is there for us and He will do it for us! She saw but she did not believe. The Apostles would not accept the conclusion that Jesus must have risen from the dead. It takes wonderful news a long time to seep into our consciousness, and convince us that Jesus has risen from the dead. Peter and John did not believe but ran to the tomb to check out for themselves and remained baffled in their unbelief. Finally, they both went into the tomb, they began to understand the scriptures, they saw and they believed. The Gospel tells us that Mary stood outside the tomb, weeping and looking into the tomb to see where they had laid his body. She sees Jesus but still does not recognize him. Finally Jesus reveals himself to her as he calls her by her name: "Mary!" This narrative of the resurrection reminds us that we come to the full understanding of the resurrection not through our intelligence but purely through the gift of the Spirit. Left on our own we look for the Lord in the wrong places, among the dead. Even when the Lord comes to us we are sometimes so caught up in our own world that we fail to recognize him. But the good news is that the Lord does not give up on us. He will reveal himself to us and call us by name so that like Mary we can say: "I have seen the Lord!" and once we have experienced the power of the resurrection nothing will ever be the same again. My son is alive! There was a Russian Cossack, who had two sons in the First World War. Their names were Peter and Gregory. One day the father got a letter from the front. Being unable to read he handed it to his daughter. It was from Gregory's commanding officer and began like this: "I regret to inform you that your son Gregory was killed in action on July 10th. Gregory was an excellent soldier and died the death of the brave. You have every reason to be proud of him, etc." The effect of this news on the father was immediate and alarming. He seemed to wilt visibly. In a matter of days he aged, turning grey almost overnight. His memory began to fail and even his mind was affected. He began to drink to excess. He kept the letter under an icon in the kitchen. Each day he would take it down and ask his daughter to read it to him once more. After the local priest had offered a Requiem Mass for his son he felt a little better, only a little. Twelve days went on like this. On the thirteenth day a second letter arrived from the front. It contained a fantastic piece of good news. His son wasn't dead after all! He had been wounded and left for dead on the battlefield. Next morning he had come to and crawled four miles back to his own lines, dragging a wounded officer with him. He was to be raised to the rank of a corporal, and had been awarded the Cross of St. George in recognition of his bravery. Right now he was recovering in hospital, and they could expect a visit from him in a month's time. Once again the effect on the father was immediate, except this time it was for the better. He was a sight to see. He was scalded with joy. He grabbed the letter and went into the village with it. He stopped everyone he met. "What do you think?" he would ask. "My son is alive! He's been awarded the St. George's Cross for bravery!" -This story should give us some idea of the joy the disciples experienced on Easter Sunday morning. At the Resurrection the Father as it were cries out: "My son is alive!" As we celebrate this same resurrection we also can cry out: "He is alive! I have seen him! I have experienced His power! We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song! Flor McCarthy in 'Sunday and Holy Day Liturgies' Witness to the Resurrection In the darkest days of Stalinist Russia a special League of the Godless was established to stamp out the last vestiges of religion from people's lives. One Easter morning the Commissar of this League addressed a huge rally in Moscow's Red Square. He ranted along his usual lines that religion was the instrument of the bourgeoisie and the opium of the proletariat. At the end of his harangue he generously offered the mike to anyone who wished to debate with him. Nobody wanted a one-way ticket to Siberia until one old man made his way forward. He surveyed his huge audience, cleared his throat and began to sing: "The Lord has risen." It was the traditional Orthodox Easter greeting. Moved by the old man's courage, voices from the square swelled up in reply: "He has truly risen." Religion in Russia was not dead as long as belief in the Resurrection of Christ was not dead in people. Sylvester O'Flynn in 'The Good News of Mark's Gospel' >From death to life Movie director Cecil B. DeMille was drifting in a canoe on a lake reading a book. He glanced from the book momentarily and saw a water beetle crawling up the side of the canoe. When it got halfway up, the beetle stuck the talons of its legs to the wood of the canoe and died. DeMille returned to reading his book. Three hours later he happened to look down at the beetle again and what he saw amazed him. The beetle had dried up, and its back had started to crack open. As he watched something began to emerge from the opening: first a moist head, then wings, then a tail. It was a beautiful dragonfly. As the dragonfly flew away, DeMille took his finger and nudged the dried-out shell of the beetle. It was like a tomb. -This beautiful death-resurrection experience from nature helps us to appreciate better what happened on Easter Sunday. Mark Link in 'Sunday Homilies' Risen from the dead Roger Bolduc was a victim of cancer. Until he died in 1977, he never ceased to believe that his illness was a precious gift from God. Shortly before his death he wrote: "Many things upon which I placed importance in the past seem so trivial now, they just don't seem to matter anymore. This has become precious. God has become so real. I can feel his power - it's always there. I feel that God has answered my prayers." Bolduc concluded by saying that he always knew God loved him, but he had no idea God loved him so much. -This is a beautiful example of the power of the risen Jesus at work in someone's life today. Roger Bolduc literally died and rose spiritually. And so we don't have to wait until we die to share in the risen life and risen power of Jesus. We can share in it right now, at this moment. Mark Link in 'Sunday Homilies' All that God does he does well Rabbi Moshe took a trip to a strange land. He took a donkey, a rooster, and a lamp. Since he was a Jew, he was refused hospitality in the village inns, so he decided to sleep in the woods. He lit his lamp to study the holy books before going to sleep, but a fierce wind came up, knocking over the lamp and breaking it. The rabbi decided to turn in, saying, "All that God does, he does well." During the night some wild animals came along and drove away the rooster and thieves stole the donkey. Moshe woke up, saw the loss, but still proclaimed easily, "All that God does, he does well." The rabbi then went back to the village where he was refused lodging, only to learn that enemy soldiers had invaded it during the night and killed all the inhabitants. He also learned that these soldiers had traveled through the same part of the woods where he lay asleep. Had his lamp not been broken he would have been discovered. Had not the rooster been chased, it would have crowed, giving him away. Had not the donkey been stolen, it would have brayed. So once more Rabbi Moshe declared, "All that God does, he does well!" Anonymous Jesus gives us Hope Michael Faraday was a famous scientist. One day his servant came into his drawing room, dropped his silver vessel on the ground and broke it into pieces. Michael collected all the pieces of the vessel and put them into a chemical solution and made one mass of it and then shaped a beautiful cup from the same material. This new creation was much more beautiful than the earlier one. It was the same silver that appeared in a different form. The Resurrection of Christ tells us that our earthly bodies will be transformed into a new life. Elias Dias in "Divine Stories for Families" May the Resurrection of Jesus fill us with New life and New hope!! Fr. Jude Botelho [email protected] PS. The stories, incidents and anecdotes used in the reflections have been collected over the years from books as well as from sources over the net and from e-mails received. Every effort is made to acknowledge authors whenever possible. If you send in stories or illustrations I would be grateful if you could quote the source as well so that they can be acknowledged if used in these reflections. These reflections are also available on my Web site www.NetForLife.net Thank you.
