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The Great Christian Feast
While Easter cannot be understood without looking back to Good Friday, we also look forward on this great feast because Easter is a baptismal feast.
The risen Christ is not the battered body from the cross, but a new body in white and bathed in light. Christ is risen with a new and different life that He is ready to share with us.
He is risen; as He died for us, He rises for us that we may share His new life, unencumbered by time and space. But it is truly His body, not a spirit or a ghost, but truly a risen body inviting those around him to touch it and on another occasion eating with His apostles.
True the accounts of His Resurrection emphasize the reality of the risen body mainly for apologetic or argumentative reasons against those who would speak only of a vision or a ghostly appearance. It is true that the witnesses to the Resurrection are truly amazed from the women at the tomb to the men on the way to Emmaus, to the doubting Thomas in the upper room. They are so amazed that they never get their stories straight but they all are clear that He is risen. They experienced the risen Christ.
The Apostles and chosen disciples are quick to show the power of the risen Christ. They are transformed from a fearful group hiding out in the upper room to those proclaiming and preaching openly, converting the crowds. Their deeds are reported with great enthusiasm in the first chapters of the Acts of the Apostles. The Apostles become a transformed and transforming presence in and about Jerusalem, not placing blame for what happened, even excusing the Jewish leaders. Who knew! Really, today, who knows!
On Easter Sunday, Christians are called upon to renew their baptismal promises by which they renounce Satan and all his works and profess again the main truths of our faith. We are to be a new people because He is risen. We can say that we share His life! Each of us is reborn.
This is the miracle and mystery of Easter. The risen Christ lives in us. We are called as were the Apostles to proclaim the reality of that transformation, and to profess it and to live it. Let Easter be a reality for us! We will dress in new clothes, wave flowers, show forth Easter eggs, all as symbols of new life and we will be, in a word, renewed.
What will living this new life mean for us? Which of our possessions will we share with the poor people whom we recognize with greater clarity as our brothers and sisters in Christ. How will we change our attitudes to advocate for and work anew for peace in the world and at home in our lives? Are there matters close to home that need to be adjusted? Family members to be reconciled? Others who we might have “written off?” These matters will involve change, if the Resurrection is real to us. Change will come about, if Easter is real. Easter is the great Christian feast. Make the change of the day real!
Easter is the feast of Baptism, but it is the feast of the Church and all the actions of the Church, the sacraments. These are actions of the Church and actions of Christ; for Christ lives and acts in His Church. We celebrate the sacraments from the small groups of parents and godparents gathered about the baptismal font to the crowds of proud parents and grandparents gathered for the visit of the bishop for Confirmation.
Christ through the Church is at work in the quiet of the confessional and at the sick bed where the Church gathers on behalf of a member who is ill.
The solemnity of a sacrament can often be obscured by misplaced hoopla, such as the activities surrounding weddings, but Christ is present as the spouses exchange pledges of their fidelity.
The Church comes alive in each of these celebrations. We are tempted to allow family expressions and customs to obscure the deep mystery that is taking place. Easter is the ideal time to underline the sacramental reality of it all. Sacraments are visible reality which express what they signify. They are tangible signs of deep realities and, while we speak of each of the sacraments, let us renew our consciousness with the reality of the Real Presence of Jesus in the greatest of the sacraments – the Eucharist.
A word of welcome to all those who will be baptized into the Church during Easter Vigil services. Also to all those who have entered into full communion with the Church by receiving the sacraments of Communion and Confirmation. We rejoice with you that the process of entry has reached this official moment of acceptance. We pray that it will signal for you and for all a lasting and fruitful membership in the family of God, which is best symbolized when we gather together around the altar.
Shame on Albany!
Normally, we would allow our Easter editorial to fill this entire space. But we cannot allow the week to go by without mentioning the atrocity which took place in Albany this past week when Gov. Spitzer and the State Legislature agreed on a budget which would allow for the experimentation on the first stages of human life.
Embryonic stem-cell experimentation is an assault on human life. It is an attempt of humans to play God by deciding who lives and who dies. It is a disgrace and our elected officials should hang their heads in shame this week.
We will have a fuller comment on the state budget next week.
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