19-Apr-2011 Dear Friend,
One of the deepest yearnings of the human heart is that we should carry on living. But the reality of human existence is that one day it will all end, we will die! The question then that confronts us is: Is life worth living if it will all suddenly end? There is hope for those who believe in Jesus and His resurrection. The resurrection is not only His triumph but a promise that we too will, like him rise again. We have the promise of the Father and the Risen Jesus is our guarantee. He has arisen and so shall we! Alleluia! Have a hope-filled Easter! Fr. Jude Sunday Reflections: Easter Sunday -'He has risen as he said! Alleluia! Alleluia!!' 24-Apr-2011 Acts 10: 34- 43; Colossians 3: 1-4; John 20: 1-9; The first reading from the Acts is part of an early sermon of Peter the apostle, 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 our life 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 death and resurrection. We are called to be witnesses but the glory of the resurrection is realized only when we have accepted our crosses and let Him bring healing into our life. He has Arisen Over the magnificent mausoleum that holds the mortal remains of Queen Victoria and those of her royal husband are inscribed the words: "Here at last I will rest with thee, and with thee in Christ I shall rise again." The root of all good works is the hope of our resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus Christ was not simply for God's glory. It was for the human race in need of it. The Lord is risen for you and me. An older cathedral stood on the site of the present St Paul's in London. It perished in the Great Fire of 1666. After the fire, the brilliant young architect Christopher Wren designed a new cathedral which took 35 years to build. The first stone that Wren picked up from the ruins of the old building bore the inscription "I will rise again". Our Lord has written the promise of our resurrection, not in stone and book alone but in the risen life of Jesus promised by the message of Easter; we die with him and we rise with him. Vima Dasan in 'His Word Lives' The Gospel begins with Mary Magdalene coming to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus. She is coming to see the dead corpse not the living Lord. She knows the stone has to be rolled away, and she also knows that she cannot do it by herself. "She saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb." But Mary does not know what the Lord is doing for her and in fear she runs and tells Peter: "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him." She saw but she did not believe. The Gospel tells us that Mary stood outside the tomb, weeping and looking into the tomb to see, not the risen Jesus but where they had laid his body. "They have taken away my Lord and I do not know where they have laid him." She was looking for Jesus in the wrong place, looking for the risen among the dead! She sees Jesus but still does not recognize him. Finally Jesus reveals himself to her as he calls her by her name: "Mary!" We can choose to believe in God, in Life, or death. Choose the God of life! Living the Word When I was a young boy, there was great excitement when a man I knew well became Lord Mayor of Cork. One day, he was a customer at the counter, the next day he was Cork's first citizen. Suddenly, he was treated just a little differently. Some were delighted. Others resented it. Nobody ignored it. Everybody will have a similar experience. Maybe, it was a foreman becoming a manager, a T.D. becoming a Taoiseach, a priest becoming a bishop. Or, it may just have been a girl you admired getting married. One event can change attitudes significantly. This happened to Christ. Some saw him as a wandering preacher, maybe even as a great miracle worker, but a dead one after Calvary. Others looked to him with the hope of freedom as one to break the Roman oppression. Their hopes were dashed at Calvary. Then, suddenly the resurrection happened. He was risen as he said. He had produced the proof that he was God. Everyone had to take sides. Either you rejected the evidence and saw Christ as a fraud, or you accepted the resurrection and Jesus as God. One cannot accept the resurrection and reject the teaching of Christ. The Easter message is that believing he is risen, we commit ourselves again to the full gospel. Tom Clancy in 'Living the Word' Don't Look for the Living Among the Dead A few weeks before Easter the father of one of the pupils from the convent school was involved in a horrible accident. While burning some branches in his garden he accidentally set fire to himself, and died as a result of his burns. Naturally his family went into deep shock, and a pall of grief settled over the house. The fact that the tragedy happened at home made it even worse. His wife was so distraught that she couldn't go out into the garden where the accident happened. Indeed, she found it difficult even to look out the window that faced onto the garden in case it brought the whole thing back in her. However, the days went by, and Easter came around. On Easter Sunday afternoon a nun from the neighbourhood convent visited the family. She was expecting to find them still grief-stricken. But she got a very pleasant surprise. As soon as she stepped into the house, she sensed that the gloom had lifted, and she got a feeling of peace, even of joy. 'Something has happened here,' she said to the mother.' I can sense it.' To which the mother replied, 'This morning my sister and a neighbouring woman came to visit me. They asked me to go out into the garden to get some fresh air. I became almost hysterical at the thought of going into the garden. But convinced that it would help me, they insisted, so eventually I went out with them. 'Slowly we walked down to the place where the fire had happened. As we approached the spot my whole body began to shake. But suddenly, I don't know how or from where, the words of the Gospel came to me. 'Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here. He is risen." And at that moment it was as if a heavy load was lifted off my back, and I felt a great sense of peace and joy.' Flor McCarthy in 'New Sunday and Holy Day Liturgies' Discovering Faith Today A man was vacationing alone in a small cabin in the California Mountains. He was feeling lonely and depressed. Something was radically wrong with his life. God seemed to have deserted him. His faith was flicking and threatening to go out. In desperation the man turned to God and promised that he would do anything God wanted, if God would give him back his peace of mind. Then something strange happened. God seemed to speak to the man. God seemed to say to him, "Start living the gospels. Start living out the teachings of Jesus, even though you don't understand them." At that moment the man made a big decision. He resolved then and there to live his life according to the teachings of Jesus. That decision turned the man's life around. It wasn't easy at first. He fell back into his old ways again and again. But that one decision made all the difference. In an article entitled "Living the Word," the man says that his cabin experience taught him a lesson that he never forgot the rest of his life. "I learned," he says, "to hear the word and to act on it." Mark Link in 'Sunday Homilies' 'God is dead? 'Christ is Risen!' Mr. Listless once lost consciousness and was declared dead. His friends wept for him, laid him in a coffin and carried him towards the cemetery. Suddenly, Listless awoke and asked his friends where they were taking him. "To the cemetery," said one; "to be buried," sighed a second: "since you're dead!" exclaimed the third. "But," protested Listless, "Can't you all see I'm alive?" unimpressed, his friends cried, "No, you're dead! The doctor certified you dead, our priest performed the last rites and the undertaker made a coffin especially for you!" "If that's the case," mused Listless, "then, I must be dead!" And, Listless lay down, consenting to being ceremoniously buried. - We're not different from Listless and friends, snuffing out life and burying God and people despite our Eucharistic 'mystery of faith': "Christ is risen!" Sadly, we've internalized the narcissistic, nihilistic aphorism of philosopher. F.W. Nietzsche: "God is dead." Nietzsche became insane in 1889 and died in 1990; yet, his attempts to bury God and idolize 'Man', that inspired Fascism and Nazism, continue to mould (post) modern minds. Thus, amidst the deaths that threaten to bury God and us, Easter proclaims: Christ is risen!" Easter bids us celebrate Life. Francis Gonsalves in 'Sunday Seeds for daily Deeds' It Began in a Tomb There is a story about a hardened criminal serving a life sentence, who felt such despair that life no longer had any hope for him. His behaviour got so mean that he was sent to solitary confinement for three weeks to what was known as "the Hole." One day while in "the Hole," a remarkable thing happened. He was lying on the cold cement doing sit-ups when he noticed something was wedged into the back corner of the cell, under the sleeping platform. He had no idea how it got there, but figured a former resident of "the Hole" must have left it. He wiggled it out. It was, of all things, a copy of the New Testament. Now the thing that is so remarkable is that the inmate actually began to read from it. The inmate had always been a dynamo of power and energy. Suddenly, he began to wonder what would have happened to him had he used his power and energy for good rather than evil. The thought completely boggled his mind. For a long time he lay there thinking: "Why did God create me? Why did God create someone who would end up behind bars? Why did God create someone who would die to goodness and love and be buried in a tomb of evil and hate in a prison cell? What happened next is hard to describe. A surprising thought entered the inmate's mind. The greatest event in history began in a tomb - a tomb just as secure and guarded as his prison cell. That event, of course, was the resurrection of Jesus. Jesus is no longer buried in a tomb. He has been raised from the dead. He now lives. Yes, Jesus Lives. That man was Starr Dailey, who after being released from prison, became one of the pioneers of prison reform in the United States. Brian Cavannaugh in 'Sower's Seeds of Encouragement' May His Resurrection bring new hope into our lives! 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.
