Are we ready for Easter?

Are we ready for Easter? After our Lenten preparation, there is a different feel to this celebration. We have been called to reflect on who Jesus is for us and how he meets us in our daily life. We have been encouraged to make room in our hearts, in our minds and in our actions to discover where he calls us to be present. We have been called to be prayerful, thoughtful and charitable. This is an important way to help draw us into the story of Holy Week and Easter. Yet the story calls us to a place where we ponder Jesus’ Passion not as disinterested spectators but as people who are affected by what unfolds. This is a profound engagement with a person who wishes us to discover the depth of God’s love for us and the way in which he cannot walk away from us. There is no greater love and it calls us to ponder on the way it moves us. What is missed in all this action is the silence of Holy Saturday. This liminal space calls us to a place in which all life is transformed not by what we say or by what we do but an encounter with silence. It is from this silence that all life changes and is renewed. That God breaks the shackles which speak only of death and destruction, horror and emptiness. They speak of a love which transcends times and space to meet us where we are. May the Easter joy surprise you and encounter a peace that disturbs you. A joy that fills us with hope and enlivens us to proclaim that Christ has risen! Alleluia!