Celebrate Easter
During the time of preparation for Easter (Lent), we find that many of our traditions have an atmosphere of penance: abstinence, the Stations of the Cross, days of reflection, the processions and the long hours of Confession. For many, the Easter celebrations do not arrive until after Good Friday.
We prepare ourselves during the forty days of Lent, but do not celebrate the fifty days of Easter. We celebrate the pain, the Passion and the death of the Lord during the celebration of the Paschal Triduum, but we do not celebrate His Resurrection. We feel His pain, His Cross, but not the joy and hope of the resurrected.
We confess a conviction that Christ died for our sins, but we do not comprehend the joy of a renewed faith as we live the Resurrection. We contemplate the pain of Calvary, but it is hard for us to find the resurrected Lord in the faces of our neighbors. We go through the process of recognizing ourselves as sinners, but it is hard to understand our mission as "witnesses of the resurrected."
On Easter we recognize His presence in our celebrations, especially in the breaking of the bread. We are certain that He is the Lamb of the new Easter. He is the Messiah and the deliverer, who through the virtue of His Passion, death and Resurrection brought new life to us. This new reality helps us grow in faith and in life so that we may encounter the Lord as He appeared to the disciples when they were frightened, when they were in prison, when He gave them new strength to go and announce the new kingdom and the new life.
Today He is also present in the midst of His people, trying to encounter each person who proclaims faith or doubts His resurrection; to revive us so that we may live His Resurrection and His victory over sin and death; to impart His peace or to ask, as He asked of Saul: "Why do you persecute me?" Because many of us do not live with the love He taught us. Instead we continue in war, hate and division. We do not recognize the dignity of all human beings, their right to life, to an education, to a worthy job; their right to live with their families and to profess their faith.
How could we celebrate Easter today?
- Father Fernando Torres