HOLY WEEK: Easter
April 20 (Easter Sunday)
- Scripture: Luke 24:6-7 – He is not here; He has risen! Remember how He told you… that the Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified, and on the third day be raised again.
- Reflection: Love overcomes death. Life persists and returns.
Spring is upon us. Can we doubt the resilience of creation? Of humanity? Well, yes, maybe we can. Yet the promise is that there is more.
Easter Sunday is the culmination of Holy Week, celebrating the resurrection of Jesus. This event is the cornerstone of our faith, declaring that death has been defeated and hope restored. As we rejoice in the arising and awakening of Christ, let us also open ourselves to explore the renewed life He offers us—life filled with purpose and possibility. - Spiritual Practice Prompt: Celebrate with family or friends, sharing in the joy of the resurrection. Do so in person or virtually. Find one experience today that catches your breath, makes you laugh, prompts you to move your body, causes you to sing out loud, or urges you to touch and connect with others.
What does it look like, for you, to be made new?
Song:
- Sunday Is Coming by Phil Wickham: https://youtu.be/PJeiyCbVn6k?si=eA0kYXLhDdeaCr0X
- Agnus Dei by Passion, Kristian Stanfill: https://youtu.be/har4itYxlBg?si=xy5bgSG1j3ANWl1B
- Resurrection Song by Genavieve Lenkowski: https://youtu.be/0nCiKk2Nx50?si=0n7-8hpYs29qpiaC
- Christ the Lord Is Risen Today by Tabernacle Choir: https://youtu.be/cErtpg5hBSw?si=xk5akk54ApYlac8T
- Thousand Hallelujahs by Brooke Ligertwood: https://youtu.be/ga057VTHdP0?si=bCpg5H-8yalJ8CMH
- Easter Medley by Movement Worship: https://youtu.be/hkG2Gl1AhYI?si=U0V8zV62utQFfycm
This is the Easter message, that awakening is possible, to the goodness of God, the sacredness of human life, the sisterhood and brotherhood of all. — Anne Lamott
The Brazilian writer and journalist Fernando Sabino wrote, “In the end, everything will be [all right]. If it’s not [all right], it’s not the end.” That’s what today is all about, “Everything will be okay in the end.”
The message of Easter is not primarily a message about Jesus’ body, although we’ve been trained to limit it to this one-time “miracle.” We’ve been educated to expect a lone, risen Jesus saying, “I rose from the dead; look at me!” … Let me share what I think the real message is: Every message about Jesus is a message about all of us, about humanity … But there’s a great secret, at least for Western Christians, hidden in the other half of the universal church. In the Eastern Orthodox Church—in places like Syria, Turkey, Greece, and Egypt—Easter is not usually painted with a solitary Jesus rising from the dead. He’s always surrounded by crowds of people—both haloed and unhaloed. In fact, in traditional icons, he’s pulling people out of Hades. Hades is not the same as hell, although we put the two words together, and so we grew up reciting in the creed that “Jesus descended into hell.”
Instead, Hades is simply the place of the dead. There’s no punishment or judgment involved. It’s just where a soul waits for God. But we neglected that interpretation. So the Eastern Church was probably much closer to the truth that the resurrection is a message about humanity. It’s a message about history. It’s a corporate message, and it includes you and me and everyone else. If that isn’t true, it’s no wonder that we basically lost interest.
Today is the feast of hope, direction, purpose, meaning, and community. We’re all in this together. The cynicism and negativity that our country and many other countries have descended into show a clear example of what happens when people do not have hope. If it’s all hopeless, we individually lose hope too. Easter is an announcement of a common hope. When we sing in the Easter hymn that Christ destroyed death, that means the death of all of us. It’s not just about Jesus; it’s to humanity that God promises, “Life is not ended, it merely changes,” as we say in the funeral liturgy. That’s what happened in Jesus, and that’s what will happen in us. In the end, everything will be all right. History is set on an inherently positive and hopeful tangent. — Fr. Richard Rohr
Our greatest enemy is the unwillingness to believe in dawn, in resurrection. Hope is what keeps the soul alive in bad times; hope gives us strength to go on despite the darkness of the moment
When we celebrate Easter as the feast of hope, this is what we proclaim: Hope is the foundation of happiness. It makes tomorrow a destination rather than simply grounds for the dread of disaster. Hope is the gift of God to us. The work it takes to make hope real is the gift we give back to God. Hope is the instinct in us that something greater than what now is, can become real. It is as much a call to respond as it is a sign of what is lacking. Hope is the cutting edge of vision. It tells us that, indeed, another world is possible but just over the horizon. Hope is not a free gift. It does not come without a cost. It requires us to earn it. Hope never solves anything. It simply opens a necessary door in the human enterprise and invites us, begs us, to walk through it–for our sake, of course, but for the sake of the world, as well. Hope is a quiet, whispered, wonderment saying over and over again in the heart of us, “Possibility, possibility, possibility.”
Most of all, hope requires that we spin a few dreams for ourselves that are possible, doable and desirable. Then, all that’s left is the doing of them. — Sr. Joan Chittister