Easter Greetings
Dear Alleluia Friends of the Co-Cathedral:
We celebrate the glorious season of Easter with this day of new life in Jesus Christ risen!! Happy Easter! We offer a most sincere welcome to the many people home for this grace-filled time and guests as well. Wherever we come from and live, we are united in the reality of belonging to Christ who has seized us in Baptism. These past days have been filled with the treasure of our faith and the joy of baptizing adults, welcoming others into full communion, and renewing our relationship with Christ with Reconciliation. Conversion is our walk to maturity with a clean heart, Oh Lord!!
Father Luigi Giussani writes: “We must imitate Jesus in his behavior towards history, because the human glory of Christ is acknowledged by us as the meaning of history, of our own personal existence and of its total contest, which is called history. “Father, the hour has come. Give glory to your Son, so that Your Son may glorify You, just as You gave Him authority over all people, so that He may give eternal life to all You gave Him.” As for Jesus, the meaning of history was the fulfillment of the Father’s will (‘This is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you send, Jesus Christ”) so for man the imitation of Christ is to live every day the aim of every action as the affirmation of the meaning of history, which is Jesus Christ Himself: Christ’s human glory.”
We are called to be witnesses. Just pause for a moment and recall a witness in your life that gave you the courage, desire, and commitment to say “yes” again to Jesus Christ Risen! We need not minimize our own way to be a witness in the most real and simple ways as we follow Christ. We may not know it, but our presence makes a significant difference as others search for His presence.
Giussani continues: “Witnessing is living for Christ’s glory. It is the phenomenon by which people acknowledge – by powerful grace, by the powerful gift – of what reality is made, of what they themselves are made: it is made of Christ, and they shout it to everybody; they prove it by their own existence, by the transformed mode of their own existence as presence. The end of history will be the day in which the whole human universe will be compelled to acknowledge this.”
Imagine this Easter message that rests in our bones: Witnessing is living Christ’s glory – the glory of the Resurrection! People acknowledge by powerful grace, by the powerful gift, of what reality is made, of what things themselves are made: it is of Christ, and they shout it to everyone!! Our Easter experience is to shout it to everyone – maybe softly for some of us, but witnessing is to recognize that I am a believer and all of reality is made of Christ.
There is a temptation in us to presume that reality does not hold a promise as we see the brutal, painful eyes of starvation, violence, and destruction. We are bombarded with this darkness, so we insist that reality holds nothing for an Easter person. In contrast, reality holds everything if we trust that Christ is the powerful grace, the powerful gift. I totally understand as I easily forget the path of vulnerability and cross over to my position where it seems that Christ is not present.
Giussani also states: “Political power, too, draws its possible earthly positivity only if it is in function of a universe, of everybody, of everyone in the world.” It is not impossible to trust in this proposal, but it seems to be that way with the level of division, separation, and the problem of leaning into absolute power made by us, power which only exists with God/Christ, Risen!! The darkness we experience in the political arena leads us to doubt that posture of “earthly positivity only if it is in function of a universe, of everybody, of everyone in the world.” There are those leaders in the world willing to make sacrifice and discover the presence of Christ or the God they know in the reality of the drama/trauma. We separate ourselves in order to be special. This cross of specialness leads us to be arrogant, powerful, and very non-relational.
Jesus Christ stayed with his humanity and did not fall to the temptation to be special, non-relational. We remove ourselves in going higher in the tree, and everyone can see us with our duplicity and isolation, but we hide as if we are untouchable. Jesus invites the witness by living for the Glory of Christ. I desire this way of being but the level of distraction and preoccupation is so strong. Lord Jesus, help me to be true and look into reality without fear in order to discover your face.
Happy Easter; we need each other,
Father Jerry Mahon
Rector/Pastor