The Hope of Easter

On Easter day, this year at the small St. Mary’s Parish, the church was packed to capacity with some standing in the back. There were so many families and lots of children and babies. The atmosphere was full of activity and energy. If only these people would want to come to mass every week. What a blessing that would be for themselves and for the church, the body of Christ.

I used to be one of those twice a year Catholics. Going to mass on Christmas and Easter was a pleasant experience that I looked forward to and enjoyed. The question is, why don’t Catholics attend mass weekly? There are a lot of reasons for this, but the bottom line is people are too full of and preoccupied with the world and living lives that are self-centered and not God centered. I lived that life and I was never truly happy or knew what real joy was. I spend the first 28 years of my life as a clueless and sinful Catholic, lacking in any depth of understanding of scripture or the catechism of the Catholic Church. I did have a guarded reverence and awe of God, from my youth, when I attended weekly mass. However, after going away to college, I quit going to church. I remember thinking that going to church was for families, and I was a single person, who like most other single people, preferred living a life of sin rather than the virtuous life the church calls us to.

At twenty-eight years of age, and after breaking away from a toxic relationship, I found myself pregnant. I also found that I was not alone, because God was right there for me, picking up the pieces and helping me put my life back together. I have spent the rest of my life getting to know and love Jesus. True love and joy is only found in a relationship with Jesus.

I would like to share an excerpt from “The Hope of Easter” written by Pope Francis, found in my Magnificant.

"We, like Peter and the women, cannot discover life by being sad, bereft of hope. Let us not stay imprisoned within ourselves, but let us break open our sealed tombs to the Lord- each of us knows what they are- so that he may enter and grant us life. Let us give him the stones of our rancor and the boulders of our past, those heavy burdens of our weaknesses and falls. Christ wants to come and take us by the hand to bring us out of our anguish. This is the first stone to be moved aside this night: the lack of hope which imprisons us within ourselves. May the Lord free us from this trap, from being Christians without hope, who live as if the Lord were not risen, as if our problems were the center of our lives….Let us not allow darkness and fear to distract us and control us; we must cry out to them: The Lord is not here, but has risen! (Luke 24;6). He is our greatest joy: he is always at our side and will never let us down…. Today (Easter) is the celebration of our hope; the celebration of this truth; nothing and no one will ever be able to separate us from his love. (cf. Romans 8:39)"

Alleluia