[This is excerpted from the 2011 Easter parish letter. It is an invitation to faith, to Christ, and to experience the Resurrection...]
The pages of history are full of worthy women and men who tell us God’s greatness, who enlighten us and point to the Salvation of God. Mohandas Gandhi, Moses the Law Giver, St. Francis of Assisi, the Buddha, St. Benedict of Nursia , the Prophet Mohammed, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the mystical, poet, Rumi, are just a few sources of great inspiration and spiritual practice. Through their lives and teachings many have cultivated a deep spirituality and religious practice. And then there is Easter…
Easter is not a person, of course. It’s an event - the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Why compare an event with a list of people? Because we so often become fixated on teaching and practice as the core of Christian faith. We believe Christianity and Christ are things of which we must learn and do. Yes, it is true. Our faith results in understanding and action, but to make these our central focus is to forget our Faith.
In truth, the source of Christian Faith is experience! Faith springs from an encounter, an experience of the Risen Christ. Easter is about God doing something BIG, something death-defying and mysterious, something beyond words. What’s more, God isn’t doing that something in the greater cosmos or in timeless eternity. God is acting right here in humanity, in our history, in our finite little selves. Imagine! This is not something we make happen. We don’t even have to understand what’s happening or why. We just get to experience it, to receive it! All the rest just follows.
I, therefore, invite you to experience Easter once again. Experience new life and renewed faith just as Christ did on that innocuously cataclysmic morning. Experience the mystery not by your own effort, but through by grace and gift of God. You don’t have to do anything. There is no obstacle course to run or test to study for. You don’t even have come believing in anything. Just come. Experience faith and life. Experience the Risen Christ. Come and see…
Our Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!
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