Easter

Happy Easter!

Do you remember in the movie, “The Wizard of Oz”, when the coroner of Munchkin Land inspects the body of the Wicked Witch the East? He pronounces her “very much dead”, as if there was another sort of “dead”. On the morning of the Resurrection of Christ, Jesus was “very much dead” in the minds and the lives of His disciples. Some of His women friends and disciples were headed to His tomb to finish the ritual embalming preparations that were prescribed by Jewish law and that were cut short on Good Friday because of the approaching Passover Feast. They still had the need of giving Him a proper burial. His Apostles and other disciples were holed away grieving the loss of their Messiah and worried that they might be next to be crucified by the evil Pontius Pilate and their angry and suspicious Jewish leaders. They also had to be very doubtful that those hopes and promises that he had always talked about were gone forever via the Cross of Calvary. They had seen His limp and bloodied body wrapped in a burial shroud and placed in a rock hewn tomb. That was it, the end of the story! Jesus was “very much dead”.


Yet Mary and the other women came to the disciples’ hiding place frantic that Jesus was not in the tomb. Peter went to the grave and saw it was empty as well. Then Mary experienced him near the grave. And disciples came back from their trip to Emaus telling the others they had met Jesus as well. He then appeared to them in their hideaway to prove to them that He was in fact very much ALIVE. There He forgives them, offers them peace, and commissions them to spread the Holy Spirit of compassion, peace, and forgiveness to the world.

HE IS STILL ALIVE!!!

It is a temptation to give up when we experience defeat. It is natural to abandon hope when our dreams are dashed. We are inclined to bury our faith when the only thing we hear from the “world” is that it is useless to believe.

What we celebrate on this Feast of the Resurrection of Our Lord is that God is never dead. And we, the people of God, can never be defeated. Christ rose from the tomb to both prove that sin, death and Satan never will have the last say in this world, no matter what the coroner says. We are called to day to look our dashed hopes, unfulfilled dreams, addictions and sinful habits, disease and the deaths of family and friends, and all of our terminal prognoses in the face and say, “My God says NO to death and YES to LIFE!”

paz,
Fr. Chuck

"Lord, I want to see!"

Dear Friends,

This weekend we hear the story of the healing of the man born blind from the Gospel of John. The interesting thing to me in the story is that after Jesus gave the man his sight, it was his parents and the religious leaders who then became blind. They couldn’t see that God could work such a miracle through Jesus for the man that they were used to knowing as a blind man. In fact they refused to see Jesus as God’s healer and teacher.

Blindness affects all of us in this way. I saw a story on 60 Minutes about a Marine who killed himself. He became despondent when he returned from Afghanistan and saw that Americans had no appreciation of the lives that were being sacrificed to keep our nation free. Elected officials from Washington to Frankfort to locally seem blind to the needs of the citizens that they represent, and only concerned with staying in office. Church officials worry about protecting the image of the institution and not about living the mission of Christ to heal and love those in most need around us. We sometimes only want to see justice, compassion and mercy when our own toes have been stepped upon.

Jesus comes to heal blindness in all its forms. Do we have the courage to pray, “Lord, I want to see!”

paz,
Fr. Chuck

Warning! Long readings at Mass this weekend!!!

Dear Folks,

Every year I hear folks comment that they wished they had been warned about the long Gospel readings that they were going to “have to” hear. Well, here is your warning. This weekend most of us will hear the story from St. John’s gospel about the adulterous woman at the well whom Jesus accepts and forgives. Next week the Gospel is about the blind man, Bartimaeus, whom Jesus heals. On the fifth weekend of Lent we will hear of Jesus Raising Lazarus from the dead. And on Palm Sunday we will walk through St. Luke’s account of Jesus’ Passion. So, put your seat belts and your ears of faith on and prepare for a possibly life altering ride.


The question for me each year is how I listen better to the now familiar stories. The answer is preparation. With these stories especially it is always important to read and pray over them a few times before we encounter them at Mass on the weekend. It would be easy to take a look at what we are about to hear and then discount it by saying, “Oh! It’s the woman at the well again. I know what that one is about.” When we do that we do the scriptures and ourselves a huge disservice.

Some of the good news about any scripture passage is that it is always alive. Sometimes by praying over these holy words they do remind us of things God wants us to recall and live more fervently. But most of the time, if we give the Holy Spirit a little time and space, God makes us hear something brand new in the Word.

So, I invite you do practice praying the Word of God that you are going to hear over the next few weeks. In fact I invite you to stretch that practice out through Holy Week and Easter. I promise you that, if you give the Holy Spirit some time and space to pray the scriptures before you hear them at Mass, you will have a newer and more profound appreciation for this season of Lent.

Paz,
Fr. Chuck