Easter season

For many, Easter 2013 is a faded memory. However on the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church, we are smack dab in the middle of the 50 day “Easter Season”. The significance of the resurrection of Jesus from the tomb is just so profound, so significant, that we can’t quickly pack it away with the Easter baskets and colored plastic eggs. Our liturgical prayers, songs and scripture readings hold before us the joy of the Risen Christ. Our environment inside and outside the church speaks of new life and resurrection even as new life springs forth from the earth. We also welcome longer hours of daylight and warmer days. And yes, we thank God for the gift of moisture which brings our land to life.

Just as we journeyed toward Easter through the 40 days of Lent, followed by the days of the Triduum, so now we take the fifty days following Easter Sunday to delight in the gift of New Life Jesus offers to us. The scriptures are important to us in every liturgical season, and they have a most prominent place each time we gather for liturgy. In this Easter season, they reveal to us how we are to live as Easter people.

We discover, in our reading of the Acts of the Apostles, that the period surrounding the first Easter was a time of bewilderment, amazement, joy, and yes, persecution. Suffering is never far away.

Concretely, how do we do we live as Easter people in the midst of violence, poverty, injustice and cosmic suffering? How do we respond to yet another large act of violence perpetrated on the innocent people gathered for the Boston marathon? And what of those who suffer because of the explosion of the fertilizer plant in Texas? These aren’t easy questions to answer. But we take our lead from Jesus. He carried within himself both the love of his Father together with the violence of suffering, mental and physical, inflicted on him. Both of these, he carried to the cross and to the Resurrection.

In his life and ministry on earth, Jesus did not ever return violence for violence. He simply kept moving forward. He kept ministering to the people to whom he was sent. He looked beyond himself to the needs of others and reached out to many.

Suffering does not cease to be part of our human condition and don’t all of us, in one way or another carry our share? Through our prayer and outreach, we bear one another’s burdens. Like Jesus, we keep our lives rooted in God who is able to lead us through death to life.

We also do not loose perspective or loose sight of the good that fills our lives. We thank God for the multiple simple gifts that surround us and give us hope: spring flowers, the birth of a child, the love of family and friends. These too keep us rooted in the joy of Easter.