Easter Hope Quotes

Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's Prayer is about.

Easter was when Hope in person surprised the whole world by coming forward from the future into the present.

If man had his way, the plan of redemption would be an endless and bloody conflict. In reality, salvation was bought not by Jesus' fist, but by His nail-pierced hands; not by muscle but by love; not by vengeance but by forgiveness; not by force but by sacrifice. Jesus Christ our Lord surrendered in order that He might win; He destroyed His enemies by dying for them and conquered death by allowing death to conquer Him.

Starting over is an acceptance of a past we can’t change, an unrelenting conviction that the future can be different, and the stubborn wisdom to use the past to make the future what the past was not.

Here the whole world (stars, water, air, And field, and forest, as they were Reflected in a single mind) Like cast off clothes was left behind In ashes, yet with hopes that she, Re-born from holy poverty, In lenten lands, hereafter may Resume them on her Easter Day." (Epitaph for Joy Davidman)

This rose of pearl-coated infinity transforms the diseased slums of a broken heart into a palace made of psalms and gold.

...left to ourselves we lapse into a kind of collusion with entrophy, acquiescing in the general belief that things may be getting worse but that there's nothing much we can do about them. And we are wrong. Our task in the present...is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day, with our Christian life, corporate and individual, in both worship and mission, as a sign of the first and a foretaste of the second.

Easter is… Joining in a birdsong, Eying an early sunrise, Smelling yellow daffodils, Unbolting windows and doors, Skipping through meadows, Cuddling newborns, Hoping, believing, Reviving spent life, Inhaling fresh air, Sprinkling seeds along furrows, Tracking in the mud. Easter is the soul’s first taste of spring.

The gifts of the Master are these: freedom, life, hope, new direction, transformation, and intimacy with God. If the cross was the end of the story, we would have no hope. But the cross isn't the end. Jesus didn't escape from death; he conquered it and opened the way to heaven for all who will dare to believe. The truth of this moment, if we let it sweep over us, is stunning. It means Jesus really is who he claimed to be, we are really as lost as he said we are, and he really is the only way for us to intimately and spiritually connect with God again.

Love paid a price so hope could become a reality.

When Good Friday comes, these are the moments in life when we feel there's no hope. But then, Easter comes.

An end is only a beginning in disguise.

On Holy Saturday I do my best to live in that place, that wax-crayon place of trust and waiting. Of accepting what I cannot know. Of mourning what needs to be mourned. Of accepting what needs to be accepted. Of hoping for what seems impossible.

The only cross in all of history that was turned into an altar was the cross on which Jesus Christ died. It was a Roman cross. They nailed Him on it, and God, in His majesty and mystery, turned it into an altar. The Lamb who was dying in the mystery and wonder of God was turned into the Priest who offered Himself. No one else was a worthy offering.

Maybe every now and then I need something ‘unbelievable’ to happen to help make that which is ‘believable’ a place where I start, but not a place where I stop.

We lose the understanding that death always begets life of some sort, and that life is always an opportunist, persistently standing ready to build something out of the smoldering ashes and raise something up out of the tangled carnage.

Life doesn’t always go our way. But one thing we know and can stand upon. Jesus has burst open the gates of LIFE. So we look ahead with great joy. The Story of God is one of hope, promise and life eternal.

An ending is only happening because at some point it was a beginning. And if an ending is dependent upon a beginning, I would be well advised to focus on the miracle of beginnings verses the pain of endings.

Easter is joy, hope, love, and renewal. Easter is proof that we can begin again.

Easter is a marvelous affirmation of the genius of our design, but it is likewise the blunt acknowledgement that left to its own devices, the genius of our design will result in the destruction of our lives.

God was never about making me spiffy; God was about making me new. New doesn't always look perfect. Like the Easter story itself, new is often messy. New looks like recovering alcoholics. New looks like reconciliation between family members who don't actually deserve it. New looks like every time I manage to admit I was wrong and every time I manage to not mention when I'm right. New looks like every fresh start and every act of forgiveness and every moment of letting go of what we thought we couldn't live without and then somehow living without it anyway. New is the thing we never saw coming- never even hoped for- but ends up being what we needed all along.

So with Easter. It was fun, as a child, to bound down the stairs to find seasonal sweet-treats under each plate, but again, with the passing of time, and the shadow of death over our broken family circle, I’ve seen Easter as highest necessity. If hope is to flourish, it had better be true.

Faith isn’t just Good Friday and Easter Sunday; faith is awkward Saturday too. So much is sitting in that tomb with the soon-to-be resurrected Lord. It’s so dark. So damp. So scary. The silence is deafening. But there is hope in there.

Take Christmas away, and in biblical terms you lose two chapters at the front of Matthew and Luke, nothing else. Take Easter away, and you don’t have a New Testament; you don’t have a Christianity; as Paul says, you are still in your sins.

On Easter day let us promise to resurrect, transcend, and transform our conscience for the happiness of mankind.

If I’m only looking at an ending, I’ll assume that an ending is all that there is. And without a doubt, that kind of assumption is the beginning of the end.

I am convinced that when we bring our griefs and sorrows within the story of God's own grief and sorrow, and allow them to be held there, God is able to bring healing to us ans new possibilities to our lives. That is, of course, what Good Friday and Easter are all about

The cross unerringly exposes this stunningly marvelous and abruptly exquisite declaration that God will not let this single life of mine, with all of its grotesque maladies and pathetic filth pass into oblivion without unflinchingly declaring that my life carries a value worth the expenditure of His. And if I dare look upon the cross, I am utterly perplexed but wholly enraptured by the immensity of such a love as this.

It isn’t Easter,” he said, “but this week has caused me to think a lot about the Easter story. Not the glorious resurrection that we celebrate on Easter Sunday but the darkness that came before. I know of no darker moment in the Bible than the moment Jesus in his agony on the cross cries out, ‘Father, why have you forsaken me?’ Darker even than his death not long after because in death Jesus at last gave himself over fully to the divine will of God. But in that moment of his bitter railing he must have felt betrayed and completely abandoned by his father, a father he’d always believed loved him deeply and absolutely. How terrible that must have been and how alone he must have felt. In dying all was revealed to him, but alive Jesus like us saw with mortal eyes, felt the pain of mortal flesh, and knew the confusion of imperfect mortal understanding. “I see with mortal eyes. My mortal heart this morning is breaking. And I do not understand. “I confess that I have cried out to God, ‘Why have you forsaken me?’ ” Here my father paused and I thought he could not continue. But after a long moment he seemed to gather himself and went on. “When we feel abandoned, alone, and lost, what’s left to us? What do I have, what do you have, what do any of us have left except the overpowering temptation to rail against God and to blame him for the dark night into which he’s led us, to blame him for our misery, to blame him and cry out against him for not caring? What’s left to us when that which we love most has been taken? “I will tell you what’s left, three profound blessings. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul tells us exactly what they are: faith, hope, and love. These gifts, which are the foundation of eternity, God has given to us and he’s given us complete control over them. Even in the darkest night it’s still within our power to hold to faith. We can still embrace hope. And although we may ourselves feel unloved we can still stand steadfast in our love for others and for God. All this is in our control. God gave us these gifts and he does not take them back. It is we who choose to discard them. “In your dark night, I urge you to hold to your faith, to embrace hope, and to bear your love before you like a burning candle, for I promise that it will light your way. “And whether you believe in miracles or not, I can guarantee that you will experience one. It may not be the miracle you’ve prayed for. God probably won’t undo what’s been done. The miracle is this: that you will rise in the morning and be able to see again the startling beauty of the day. “Jesus suffered the dark night and death and on the third day he rose again through the grace of his loving father. For each of us, the sun sets and the sun also rises and through the grace of our Lord we can endure our own dark night and rise to the dawning of a new day and rejoice. “I invite you, my brothers and sisters, to rejoice with me in the divine grace of the Lord and in the beauty of this morning, which he has given us.

The significance of the resurrection claim within “true” Christian descriptions of the self, world and God is that, despite how tragic and hopeless present situations and circumstances appear to be, there is a God who sits high and looks low, a God who came into this filthy, fallen world in the form of a common peasant in order to commence a new epoch, an epoch in which Easter focuses our attention on the decisive victory of Jesus Christ and hence the possibility of our victory over our creature hood, the old creation and this old world, with its history of oppression and exploitation. So to be a Christian is to have a joyful attitude toward the resurrection claim, to stake one’s life on it and to rest one’s hope upon its promise — the promise of a new heaven and a new earth.

But she knew it would never happen. She had no intention of visiting him there. Even if she were open to the idea, as Mom and Dad both hoped she would be, the mathematics of it seemed utterly impossible to her. What was she supposed to do, spend Christmas there and Easter here? See her dad every other holiday and one week during the summer, just enough to glimpse his new life in fragments, tiny slivers of a world she had no part in? And all the while missing out on those moments of her mom’s life—her mom, who’d done nothing to deserve to spend Christmas alone? That, it seemed to Hadley, was no way to live. Perhaps if there were more time, or if time were more malleable; if she could be both places at once, live parallel lives; or, simpler yet, if Dad would just come home. Because as far as she was concerned, there was no in-between: She wanted all or nothing, illogically, irrationally, even though something inside of her knew that nothing would be too hard, and all was impossible.

Arise! Arise! Arise and shine! May Christ message of eternal life fill your heart with everlasting love, hope, happiness and new dreams.

I would much prefer to see endings as the womb within which beginnings are born.

Life however is teeming with vitality and is likewise terribly tenacious; holding on against impossible odds in impossible situations over impossible lengths of time.

When I die, I would like Easter hymns sung at my funeral because they are so joyful. They're hopeful. They reflect our belief in the resurrection of the dead.

There’s something of a restorative quality about spring, where something whispers wild rumors of new beginnings arising from the seemingly dead seeds in our lives. There’s something almost cruel about it all, as if there might be some sort of truth about a new life actually being possible. Yet, maybe it is true.

To summarize, Easter Sunday is the most important Sunday. It is the Sunday of all Sundays. It is the day of the new beginning of the entire cosmos, the day of resurrection. In our worship we must be careful not to reduce our message to the Easter fact only. The Easter fact must include the message this fact proclaims: God makes all things new. It must also include the message that we have been raised with Christ. Calling God's people to die to sin and rise to the new life is central not only to Easter day but to the Easter season.

I still dream in pictures and color, always the world of my childhood. I see the purple Judas trees at Easter lighting up the roadsides and terraces of the town. Ochre cliffs made of cinnamon powder. Autumn clouds rolling along the ground of the hills, and the patchwork of wet oak leaves on the grass. The shape of a rose petal. And my parents' faces, which will never grow any older. "But it is strange how scent brings it all back too. I only have to smell certain aromas, and I am back in a certain place with a certain feeling." The comforting past smelled of heliotrope and cherry and sweet almond biscuits: close-up smells, flowers you had to put your nose to as the sight faded from your eyes. The scents of that childhood past had already begun to slip away: Maman's apron with blotches of game stew; linen pressed with faded lavender; the sheep in the barn. The present, or what had so very recently been the present, was orange blossom infused with hope.

Every Holy Saturday, the Church waits as it were beside the tomb, meditating on Christ's death while awaiting the announcement of his resurrection. Like John, we can take Mary into our homes and ponder with her the last words of Christ. Like her, we can rest in a place between anguish and joy, waiting in quiet hope. We can pray the Divine Office, which parts the veil to show us Christ defeating death and releasing sinners from captivity. The King is not dead; he rests from his work. A new day will come. His Cross is not defeat; it is victory!

To share Eucharistic communion with someone unbaptized, or committed to another story or system, is odd—not because the sacrament is 'profaned', or because grace cannot be given to those outside the household, but because the symbolic integrity of the Eucharist depends upon its being celebrated by those who both commit themselves to the paradigm of Jesus' death and resurrection and acknowledge that their violence is violence offered to Jesus. All their betrayals are to be understood as betrayals of him; and through that understanding comes forgiveness and hope. Those who do not so understand themselves and their sin or their loss will not make the same identification of their victims with Jesus, nor will they necessarily understand their hope for their vocation in relation to him and his community. Their participation is thus anomalous: it is hard to see the meaning of what is being done.

The resurrection is not only God’s vindication of his Son; it is the vindication of all Jesus taught. Easter Sunday is nothing less than the triumph of the peaceable kingdom of Christ. Easter changes everything. Easter is the hope of the world, the dawn of a new age, the rising of the New Jerusalem on the horizon of humanity’s burned-out landscape. Easter is God saying once again, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him!

People up today and down tomorrow, working this week and fired the next, beaten and baffled, but determined not to be wholly beaten, buying furniture on the installment plan, filling the house with roomers to help pay the rent, hoping to get a new suit for Easter—and pawning that suit before the Fourth of July.

Resurrection does not come without crucifixion, and you cannot celebrate Easter without living Good Friday.

Easter is the brazen declaration that there is nothing that we can destroy that need remain destroyed.

Ever notice how baby shampoo smells like spring?

The size of an ending will never offset the inevitability of a beginning.

It’s ok to not look back. It’s ok to look forward to the future with a broken heart and a limp. Is there any other way to travel toward God this side of heaven?

Window weather. It’s not charming, or wimpish, but a state of mind in which a fairly serious hope, that winter is over, that life is returning, is lost. It’s the antithesis of Easter.

And to say “Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy” is to lay our hope in the redeeming work of the God of  Easter as though our lives depended on it. Because they do. It means that we are an Easter people, a people who know that resurrection, especially in and among the least likely people and places, is the way that God redeems even the biggest messes we make

I tried to bend over and touch my toes this morning,” I tell the girls. “I tipped over, hit my head on the desk, and then had to call for Nana to get up. I’m literally the size of an Oompa Loompa.” “You’re the most beautiful Oompa Loompa in the world,” Hope declares. “Because she’s not orange.” “Oompa Loompas were orange?” I try to conjure up a mental picture of them but can only recall their white overalls. Carin purses her lips. “Were they supposed to be candies? Like orange slices? Or maybe candy corn?” “They were squirrels,” Hope informs us. “No way,” we both say at once. “Yes way. I read it on the back of a Laffy Taffy when I was like ten. It was a trivia question and I’d just seen the movie. I was terrified of squirrels for years afterwards.” “Shit. Learn something new every day.” I push my body upright, a task that takes a certain amount of upper body strength these days, and toddle over to inspect the crib. “I don’t believe you,” Carin tells Hope. “The movie is about candy. It’s called Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Since when are squirrels candies? I can buy into a bunny because, you know, the chocolate Easter bunnies, but not a squirrel.” “Look it up, Careful. I’m right.” “You’re ruining my childhood.” Carin turns to me. “Don’t do this to your daughter.” “Raise her to believe Oompa Loompas are squirrels?” “Yes

Like the rest of Holy Week, Easter is also a terrific story. It starts as tragedy: the hero broken and bloody, against all expectation dead, his followers' joyful hope in him entombed with his corpse, the rock rolled into place, sealing their despair. But the curtain doesn't fall there. The next morning at dawn they discover the rock has been rolled back. The tomb is empty, the body's gone! A missing corpse? Great stuff. A whisper of comedy. Now a touch of farce as Mary Magdalen and the guys chase frantically around looking for help, or the corpse, when suddenly, out of nowhere, up it pops—alive! Of course it's Jesus, who's done the impossible and beaten death. And they're so amazed they think he's the gardener! It's a payoff way beyond the Hollywood ending: all the flooding emotion and uplift of a tragedy followed by all the bubbling joy and optimism of a comedy. Is that possible? Not just to live happily ever after but to die—and still live happily ever after? It's the most audacious claim of Christianity, the one element that marks the brand indelibly, that trumps the claims of all other major faiths.

Sometimes I think Earth has got to be the insane asylum of the universe. . . and I'm here by computer error. At sixty-eight, I hope I've gained some wisdom in the past fourteen lustrums and it’s obligatory to speak plain and true about the conclusions I've come to; now that I have been educated to believe by such mentors as Wells, Stapledon, Heinlein, van Vogt, Clarke, Pohl, (S. Fowler) Wright, Orwell, Taine, Temple, Gernsback, Campbell and other seminal influences in scientifiction, I regret the lack of any female writers but only Radclyffe Hall opened my eyes outside sci-fi. I was a secular humanist before I knew the term. I have not believed in God since childhood's end. I believe a belief in any deity is adolescent, shameful and dangerous. How would you feel, surrounded by billions of human beings taking Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy and the stork seriously, and capable of shaming, maiming or murdering in their name? I am embarrassed to live in a world retaining any faith in church, prayer or a celestial creator. I do not believe in Heaven, Hell or a Hereafter; in angels, demons, ghosts, goblins, the Devil, vampires, ghouls, zombies, witches, warlocks, UFOs or other delusions; and in very few mundane individuals--politicians, lawyers, judges, priests, militarists, censors and just plain people. I respect the individual's right to abortion, suicide and euthanasia. I support birth control. I wish to Good that society were rid of smoking, drinking and drugs. My hope for humanity - and I think sensible science fiction has a beneficial influence in this direction - is that one day everyone born will be whole in body and brain, will live a long life free from physical and emotional pain, will participate in a fulfilling way in their contribution to existence, will enjoy true love and friendship, will pity us 20th century barbarians who lived and died in an atrocious, anachronistic atmosphere of arson, rape, robbery, kidnapping, child abuse, insanity, murder, terrorism, war, smog, pollution, starvation and the other negative “norms” of our current civilization. I have devoted my life to amassing over a quarter million pieces of sf and fantasy as a present to posterity and I hope to be remembered as an altruist who would have been an accepted citizen of Utopia.

He cannot do anything deliberate now. The strain of his whole weight on his outstretched arms hurts too much. The pain fills him up, displaces thought, as much for him as it has for everyone else who has ever been stuck to one of these horrible contrivances, or for anyone else who dies in pain from any of the world’s grim arsenal of possibilities. And yet he goes on taking in. It is not what he does, it is what he is. He is all open door: to sorrow, suffering, guilt, despair, horror, everything that cannot be escaped, and he does not even try to escape it, he turns to meet it, and claims it all as his own. This is mine now, he is saying; and he embraces it with all that is left in him, each dark act, each dripping memory, as if it were something precious, as if it were itself the loved child tottering homeward on the road. But there is so much of it. So many injured children; so many locked rooms; so much lonely anger; so many bombs in public places; so much vicious zeal; so many bored teenagers at roadblocks; so many drunk girls at parties someone thought they could have a little fun with; so many jokes that go too far; so much ruining greed; so much sick ingenuity; so much burned skin. The world he claims, claims him. It burns and stings, it splinters and gouges, it locks him round and drags him down… All day long, the next day, the city is quiet. The air above the city lacks the usual thousand little trails of smoke from cookfires. Hymns rise from the temple. Families are indoors. The soldiers are back in barracks. The Chief Priest grows hoarse with singing. The governor plays chess with his secretary and dictates letters. The free bread the temple distributed to the poor has gone stale by midday, but tastes all right dipped in water or broth. Death has interrupted life only as much as it ever does. We die one at a time and disappear, but the life of the living continues. The earth turns. The sun makes its way towards the western horizon no slower or faster than it usually does. Early Sunday morning, one of the friends comes back with rags and a jug of water and a box of the grave spices that are supposed to cut down on the smell. She’s braced for the task. But when she comes to the grave she finds that the linen’s been thrown into the corner and the body is gone. Evidently anonymous burial isn’t quite anonymous enough, after all. She sits outside in the sun. The insects have woken up, here at the edge of the desert, and a bee is nosing about in a lily like silk thinly tucked over itself, but much more perishable. It won’t last long. She takes no notice of the feet that appear at the edge of her vision. That’s enough now, she thinks. That’s more than enough. Don’t be afraid, says Yeshua. Far more can be mended than you know. She is weeping. The executee helps her to stand up.

As I was about to complain that this 2020 is not the year I have ordered. Then I remembered Romans 5:3-11 3 We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. 4 And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. 5 And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love….

King refused to lose hope or to relinquish the belief that “all reality hinges on moral foundations.” He focused his hope on Jesus’ cross and resurrection. “Christ came to show us the way. Men love darkness rather than the light, and they crucified Him, there on Good Friday on the Cross it was still dark, but then Easter came, and Easter is the eternal reminder of the fact that the truth-crushed earth will rise again.” No matter what disappointments he faced, King still preached hope with the passion of a prophet: “I still have a dream, because, you know, you can’t give up on life. If you lose hope, somehow you lose that vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you to go on in spite of all.”[49]

My sin murdered Him. And out of this self-loathing shame borne of the understanding that I could perpetrate such a heinous act, I am barely able to raise my head sufficiently to ask what crazed insanity would prompt Jesus to walk out of an empty tomb for the single purpose of pursuing a decaying soul that murdered Him? And I would be wise to consider that the question itself is asked only because I have yet to touch the barest periphery of God’s love despite the fact that because of an empty tomb it stands right in front of me.

People referred to the symbolism of the empty Cross more than once on its journey. It would seem obviously to point to our faith in Jesus’ resurrection. It’s not quite so simple though. The Cross is bare, but in and of itself the empty Cross does not point directly to the Resurrection. It says only that the body of Jesus was removed from the Cross. If a crucifix is a symbol of Good Friday, then it is the image of the empty tomb that speaks more directly of Easter and resurrection. The empty Cross is a symbol of Holy Saturday. It’s an indicator of the reality of Jesus’ death, of His sharing in our mortal coil. At the same time, the empty Cross is an implicit sign of impending resurrection, and it tells us that the Cross is not only a symbol of hatred, violence and inhumanity: it says that the Cross is about something more. The empty Cross also tells us not to jump too quickly to resurrection, as if the Resurrection were a trump card that somehow absolves us from suffering. The Resurrection is not a divine ‘get-out-of-jail free’ card that immunises people from pain, suffering or death. To jump too quickly to the Resurrection runs the risk of trivialising people’s pain and seemingly mapping out a way through suffering that reduces the reality of having to live in pain and endure it at times. For people grieving, introducing the message of the Resurrection too quickly cheapens or nullifies their sense of loss. The empty Cross reminds us that we cannot avoid suffering and death. At the same time, the empty Cross tells us that, because of Jesus’ death, the meaning of pain, suffering and our own death has changed, that these are not all-crushing or definitive. The empty Cross says that the way through to resurrection must always break in from without as something new, that it cannot be taken hold of in advance of suffering or seized as a panacea to pain. In other words, the empty Cross is a sign of hope. It tells us that the new life of God surprises us, comes at a moment we cannot expect, and reminds us that experiences of pain, grief and dying are suffused with the presence of Christ, the One Who was crucified and is now risen.

Peace. Rest. Hope. Joy. All the things Nyree wanted, and all the things only God could give. But to gain them, she’d need to give herself to Him. And she couldn’t do that. She wanted life on her own terms. She’d always been independent and self-reliant. Yet what kind of life was that providing her?

Because of Bethlehem, I have a Savior in heaven. Christmas begins what Easter celebrates. The child in the cradle became the King on the cross. And because he did, there are no marks on my record. Just grace. His offer has no fine print. He didn’t tell me, “Clean up before you come in.” He offered, “Come in and I’ll clean you up.” It’s not my grip on him that matters but his grip on me. And his grip is sure.

I will always give you hope. Here is why. We will get through this. I want you to know this. This Easter I just chilled at home. So did you. Today I told a friend who was feeling low I told her this. We are in this moment. I know it is scary and depressing. BUT next year this will be a story. Maybe a topic of conversation on a first date. When this whole thing is over it will be "do you remember when" and we will get there. This too shall pass.

Now for some hope. It's Easter Sunday. The day that is usually spent with family and friends. This year is more chill. That's all. Just hanging out by staying in. ON the other side of this we will all talk about this time. It will be like where you were for the great quake of 1989 or 9-11 or where you were when JFK was shot. It's going to be one of those kinds of moments. BUT the we made it through those times. We will make it through this. We are stronger together. Plus we will have a big Easter together next year! This year let's all just chill in place.

I cannot bring myself to surrender to the belief that any ending is permanent, despite the fact that many endings arrogantly allege that the scope of their finality is sufficient to make just such a declaration. I have found that my humanity rails against such declarations and therefore sets itself on a journey (however perilous) to find a beginning nestled in the declared finality of every ending. And in all of my many journey’s (as perilous as many of them have been), I have yet to experience an ending that did not hold a beginning somewhere within the finality of itself.

In Cootamundra the station was quiet. Tina looked around but before she could see anyone she saw the poster on the wall. Lockie saw it too. It stopped him mid-stride. It was surrounded by For Sale notices and babysitting flyers.Over the months it could have become covered over as hope was lost but it hadn’t been. Right in the middle, with some clear space around it, was the colour poster of a blue-eyed boy. His head was covered in golden curls and he had a deep dimple on his right cheek. His face had been enlarged so that every freckle could be counted. He was Lachlan Williams and in this town they were still looking for him. He looked nothing like the pale, skinny boy Tina was with. Underneath the picture were the words - Missing:Lachlan Williams Aged 8 Disappeared from the Easter Show April 2010. If you have any information please contact...There were a whole lot of numbers and a website address. Lockie stared at the poster for a minute. He pushed his hood back down and ran his hand over his brush-cut blond hair. ‘What—’ Tina began. ‘He shaved it,’ said Lockie before she could complete the question. ‘Every few weeks, when it got longer, he would shave it again.’ His voice was two hundred years old.Tina saw her hand on the poker and felt a surge of triumph at what she had done. Some people just deserved to die. It wasn’t a nice thought but it was true. You couldn’t change someone who was fundamentally evil. Of everything Lockie must have suffered, and Tina could not even wrap her mind around what he must have gone through, the shaving of his head seemed somehow the worst. The uniform had changed who Lockie was. He was a golden boy with golden curls and the uniform had taken the gold from him. Lockie looked nothing like the poster. His face was all angles and his smile was lost. He hadn’t needed to conceal himself beneath a hood. No one would have recognised him anyway.

The day after she went to walk on the Pincian Hill—the Hyde Park of the Roman idlers—possibly in hopes to have another sight of Lord Steyne. But she met another acquaintance there: it was Mr. Fiche, his lordship's confidential man, who came up nodding to her rather familiarly and putting a finger to his hat. "I knew that Madame was here," he said; "I followed her from her hotel. I have some advice to give Madame." "From the Marquis of Steyne?" Becky asked, resuming as much of her dignity as she could muster, and not a little agitated by hope and expectation. "No," said the valet; "it is from me. Rome is very unwholesome." "Not at this season, Monsieur Fiche—not till after Easter." "I tell Madame it is unwholesome now. There is always malaria for some people. That cursed marsh wind kills many at all seasons. Look, Madame Crawley, you were always bon enfant, and I have an interest in you, parole d'honneur. Be warned. Go away from Rome, I tell you—or you will be ill and die.

Jack took two steps towards the couch and then heard his daughter’s distressed wails, wincing. “Oh, right. The munchkin.” He instead turned and headed for the stairs, yawning and scratching his messy brown hair, calling out, “Hang on, chubby monkey, Daddy’s coming.” Jack reached the top of the stairs. And stopped dead. There was a dragon standing in the darkened hallway. At first, Jack swore he was still asleep. He had to be. He couldn’t possibly be seeing correctly. And yet the icy fear slipping down his spine said differently. The dragon stood at roughly five feet tall once its head rose upon sighting Jack at the other end of the hallway. It was lean and had dirty brown scales with an off-white belly. Its black, hooked claws kneaded the carpet as its yellow eyes stared out at Jack, its pupils dilating to drink him in from head to toe. Its wings rustled along its back on either side of the sharp spines protruding down its body to the thin, whip-like tail. A single horn glinted sharp and deadly under the small, motion-activated hallway light. The only thing more noticeable than that were the many long, jagged scars scored across the creature’s stomach, limbs, and neck. It had been hunted recently. Judging from the depth and extent of the scars, it had certainly killed a hunter or two to have survived with so many marks. “Okay,” Jack whispered hoarsely. “Five bucks says you’re not the Easter Bunny.” The dragon’s nostrils flared. It adjusted its body, feet apart, lips sliding away from sharp, gleaming white teeth in a warning hiss. Mercifully, Naila had quieted and no longer drew the creature’s attention. Jack swallowed hard and held out one hand, bending slightly so his six-foot-two-inch frame was less threatening. “Look at me, buddy. Just keep looking at me. It’s alright. I’m not going to hurt you. Why don’t you just come this way, huh?” He took a single step down and the creature crept forward towards him, hissing louder. “That’s right. This way. Come on.” Jack eased backwards one stair at a time. The dragon let out a warning bark and followed him, its saliva leaving damp patches on the cream-colored carpet. Along the way, Jack had slipped his phone out of his pocket and dialed 9-1-1, hoping he had just enough seconds left in the reptile’s waning patience. “9-1-1, what’s your emergency?” “Listen to me carefully,” Jack said, not letting his eyes stray from the dragon as he fumbled behind him for the handle to the sliding glass door. He then quickly gave her his address before continuing. “There is an Appalachian forest dragon in my house. Get someone over here as fast as you can.” “We’re contacting a retrieval team now, sir. Please stay calm and try not to make any loud noises or sudden movements–“ Jack had one barefoot on the cool stone of his patio when his daughter Naila cried for him again. The dragon’s head turned towards the direction of upstairs. Jack dropped his cell phone, grabbed a patio chair, and slammed it down on top of the dragon’s head as hard as he could.

Christmas In India Dim dawn behind the tamerisks -- the sky is saffron-yellow -- As the women in the village grind the corn, And the parrots seek the riverside, each calling to his fellow That the Day, the staring Easter Day is born. Oh the white dust on the highway! Oh the stenches in the byway! Oh the clammy fog that hovers And at Home they're making merry 'neath the white and scarlet berry -- What part have India's exiles in their mirth? Full day begind the tamarisks -- the sky is blue and staring -- As the cattle crawl afield beneath the yoke, And they bear One o'er the field-path, who is past all hope or caring, To the ghat below the curling wreaths of smoke. Call on Rama, going slowly, as ye bear a brother lowly -- Call on Rama -- he may hear, perhaps, your voice! With our hymn-books and our psalters we appeal to other altars, And to-day we bid "good Christian men rejoice!" High noon behind the tamarisks -- the sun is hot above us -- As at Home the Christmas Day is breaking wan. They will drink our healths at dinner -- those who tell us how they love us, And forget us till another year be gone! Oh the toil that knows no breaking! Oh the Heimweh, ceaseless, aching! Oh the black dividing Sea and alien Plain! Youth was cheap -- wherefore we sold it. Gold was good -- we hoped to hold it, And to-day we know the fulness of our gain. Grey dusk behind the tamarisks -- the parrots fly together -- As the sun is sinking slowly over Home; And his last ray seems to mock us shackled in a lifelong tether. That drags us back how'er so far we roam. Hard her service, poor her payment -- she is ancient, tattered raiment -- India, she the grim Stepmother of our kind. If a year of life be lent her, if her temple's shrine we enter, The door is hut -- we may not look behind. Black night behind the tamarisks -- the owls begin their chorus -- As the conches from the temple scream and bray. With the fruitless years behind us, and the hopeless years before us, Let us honor, O my brother, Christmas Day! Call a truce, then, to our labors -- let us feast with friends and neighbors, And be merry as the custom of our caste; For if "faint and forced the laughter," and if sadness follow after, We are richer by one mocking Christmas past.

Napoleon entered Moscow on the morning of Tuesday the 15th, installed himself in the Kremlin (once it had been checked for mines), and went to bed early.* ‘The city is as big as Paris,’ Napoleon wrote to Marie Louise, ‘provided with everything.’10 Ségur recalled how ‘Napoleon’s earlier hopes revived at the sight of the palace’, but at dusk that evening fires broke out simultaneously across the city which could not be contained because of a strong north-easterly equinoctal wind and the fact that the city’s governor, Fyodor Rostopchin, had removed or destroyed all the city’s fire-engines and sunk the city’s fleet of fire-boats before leaving.11 ‘I am setting fire to my mansion’, he wrote to the French on a sign on his own estate at Voronovo outside Moscow, ‘rather than let it be sullied by your presence.’12 (Although he later was fêted for having ordered the burning of Moscow, some of it initiated by criminals he had released from the city’s jails for the purpose, towards the end of his life Rostopchin denied that he had done so, to the bemusement of his friends and family.13) That night the fires were so bright that it was possible to read in the Kremlin without the aid of lamps.

I am putting up a signpost, not offering a photograph of what we will find once we get to where the signpost is pointing. I don’t know what musical instruments we shall have to play Bach in God’s new world, though I’m sure Bach’s music will be there. I don’t know how my planting a tree today will relate to the wonderful trees that there will be in God’s recreated world, though I do remember Martin Luther’s words about the proper reaction to knowing the kingdom was coming the next day being to go out and plant a tree. I do not know how the painting an artist paints today in prayer and wisdom will find a place in God’s new world. I don’t know how our work for justice for the poor, for remission of global debts, will reappear in that new world. But I know that God’s new world of justice and joy, of hope for the whole earth, was launched when Jesus came out of the tomb on Easter morning, and I know that he calls his followers to live in him and by the power of his Spirit and so to be new-creation people here and now, bringing signs and symbols of the kingdom to birth on earth as in heaven. The resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Spirit mean that we are called to bring real and effective signs of God’s renewed creation to birth even in the midst of the present age.

If Thomas represents an epistemology of faith, which transcends but also includes historical and scientific knowing, we might suggest that Paul represents at this point an epistemology of hope. In 1 Corinthians 15 he sketches his argument that there will be a future resurrection as part of God’s new creation, the redemption of the entire cosmos as in Romans 8. Hope, for the Christian, is not wishful thinking or mere blind optimism. It is a mode of knowing, a mode within which new things are possible, options are not shut down, new creation can happen. There is more to be said about this, but not here. All of which brings us to Peter. Epistemologies of faith and hope, both transcending and including historical and scientific knowing, point on to an epistemology of love—an idea I first met in Bernard Lonergan but that was hardly new with him. The story of John 21 sharpens it up. Peter, famously, has denied Jesus. He has chosen to live within the normal world, where the tyrants win in the end and where it’s better to dissociate yourself from people who get on the wrong side of them. But now, with Easter, Peter is called to live in a new and different world. Where Thomas is called to a new kind of faith and Paul to a radically renewed hope, Peter is called to a new kind of love.15 Here

„The air was saturated with the finest flour of a silence so nourishing, so succulent, that I could move through it only with a sort of greed, especially on those first mornings of Easter week, still cold, when I tasted it more keenly because I had only just arrived in Combray: before I went in to say good morning to my aunt, they made me wait for a moment, in the first room where the sun, still wintry, had come to warm itself before the fire, already lit between the two bricks and coating the whole room with an odour of soot, having the same effect as one of those great country ‘front-of-the-ovens’, or one of those château mantelpieces, beneath which one sits hoping that outdoors there will be an onset of rain, snow, even some catastrophic deluge so as to add, to the comfort of reclusion, the poetry of hibernation; I would take a few steps from the prayer stool to the armchairs of stamped velvet always covered with a crocheted antimacassar; and as the fire baked like a dough the appetizing smells with which the air of the room was all curdled and which had already been kneaded and made to ‘rise’ by the damp and sunny coolness of the morning, it flaked them, gilded them, puckered them, puffed them, making them into an invisible, palpable country pastry, an immense ‘turnover’ in which, having barely tasted the crisper, more delicate, more highly regarded but also drier aromas of the cupboard, the chest of drawers, the floral wallpaper, I would always come back with an unavowed covetousness to snare myself in the central, sticky, stale, indigestible and fruity smell of the flowered coverlet.

..."facts" properly speaking are always and never more than interpretations of the data... the Gospel accounts are themselves such data or, if you like, hard facts. But the events to which the Gospels refer are not themselves "hard facts"; they are facts only in the sense that we interpret the text, together with such other data as we have, to reach a conclusion regarding the events as best we are able. They are facts in the same way that the verdict of a jury establishes the facts of the case, the interpretation of the evidence that results in the verdict delivered. Here it is as well to remember that historical methodology can only produce probabilities, the probability that some event took place in such circumstances being greater or smaller, depending on the quality of the data and the perspective of the historical enquirer. The jury which decides what is beyond reasonable doubt is determining that the probability is sufficiently high for a clear-cut verdict to be delivered. Those who like "certainty" in matters of faith will always find this uncomfortable. But faith is not knowledge of "hard facts"...; it is rather confidence, assurance, trust in the reliability of the data and in the integrity of the interpretations derived from that data... It does seem important to me that those who speak for evangelical Christians grasp this nettle firmly, even if it stings! – it is important for the intellectual integrity of evangelicals. Of course any Christian (and particularly evangelical Christians) will want to get as close as possible to the Jesus who ministered in Galilee in the late 20s of the first century. If, as they believe, God spoke in and through that man, more definitively and finally than at any other time and by any other medium, then of course Christians will want to hear as clearly as possible what he said, and to see as clearly as possible what he did, to come as close as possible to being an eyewitness and earwitness for themselves. If God revealed himself most definitively in the historical particularity of a Galilean Jew in the earliest decades of the Common Era, then naturally those who believe this will want to inquire as closely into the historical particularity and actuality of that life and of Jesus’ mission. The possibility that later faith has in some degree covered over that historical actuality cannot be dismissed as out of the question. So a genuinely critical historical inquiry is necessary if we are to get as close to the historical actuality as possible. Critical here, and this is the point, should not be taken to mean negatively critical, hermeneutical suspicion, dismissal of any material that has overtones of Easter faith. It means, more straightforwardly, a careful scrutiny of all the relevant data to gain as accurate or as historically responsible a picture as possible. In a day when evangelical, and even Christian, is often identified with a strongly right-wing, conservative and even fundamentalist attitude to the Bible, it is important that responsible evangelical scholars defend and advocate such critical historical inquiry and that their work display its positive outcome and benefits. These include believers growing in maturity • to recognize gray areas and questions to which no clear-cut answer can be given (‘we see in a mirror dimly/a poor reflection’), • to discern what really matters and distinguish them from issues that matter little, • and be able to engage in genuine dialogue with those who share or respect a faith inquiring after truth and seeking deeper understanding. In that way we may hope that evangelical (not to mention Christian) can again become a label that men and women of integrity and good will can respect and hope to learn from more than most seem to do today.

The Easter message of re-birth is one of transcendent hope, but it bears a lot of relationship to the despair that we see all around us.

Our task in the present is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day, with our Christian life, corporate and individual, in both worship and mission, as a sign of the first and a foretaste of the second.

Despite a thousand Easter hymns and a million Easter sermons, the resurrection narratives in the gospels never, ever say anything like, “Jesus is raised, therefore there is a life after death,” let alone, “Jesus is raised, therefore we shall go to heaven when we die.” Nor even, in a more authentic first-century Christian way, do they say, “Jesus is raised, therefore we shall be raised from the dead after the sleep of death.” No. Insofar as the event is interpreted, Easter has a very this-worldly, present-age meaning: Jesus is raised, so he is the Messiah, and therefore he is the world’s true Lord; Jesus is raised, so God’s new creation has begun—and we, his followers, have a job to do! Jesus is raised, so we must act as his heralds, announcing his lordship to the entire world, making his kingdom come on earth as in heaven! To be sure, as early as Paul the resurrection of Jesus is firmly linked to the final resurrection of all God’s people.

Passover enables us to pause and observe His death in preparation for Easter Sunday. Good Friday and Easter – or Resurrection Sunday – is the crux of our Christian faith and heritage. However, over time this season has been downgraded in our culture to a “Happy Spring,” “Easter Bunny,” and candy-egg sort of event. While the church still emphasizes Easter (hopefully), Americans in general have lost sight of its true meaning. While these other practices may be harmless, they distract from the very reason for the Easter celebration, which is the bodily resurrection of our Savior, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It is time to recapture the wonder and rich tradition of this season, beginning with Passover, a purposeful meal around the dinner table.

The disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear…. —John 20:19 (NIV) After eighteen years, Pastor John preached his last sermon at our church. We honored him and his wife, Diane, with music and skits based on a popular radio program. As the host, I closed by saying, “Please come back next week! Even though two key players are leaving, make no mistake: God will always be the star of our church and He isn’t going anywhere. We all have access to Him through His Son and agent Jesus Christ. The entire production, every week, is guided and directed by the Holy Spirit.” Several members of our congregation thanked me for reminding them that a pastor, no matter how beloved, is not the Messiah. I spoke those words confidently, and yet seeing John’s empty office was unsettling. Was it like an empty tomb? Or was it just an office waiting to be filled by another key player who is not a star? There is a definite Good Friday feel to our church this week, even though Easter has come and gone. Attendance had doubled within four years of John’s arrival at our church. He eventually welcomed over seven hundred new members. Some moved away, some died, and many others will probably leave now that John is gone. To many of us, John was our church. But I hope we look to God first in our search for new leadership. I hope Jesus gives us that access. I hope the Holy Spirit directs us not just to a new pastor but to a new understanding of what we can be without John. I hope. Dear God, please allow us to become the humble leaders we are searching for. —Tim Williams Digging Deeper: Acts 20:28; 1 Cor 12:12–26

What you had in the chronicle of the country then was a few centuries of a game of Rebellion-Betrayal, Rebellion-Betrayal, Uprising Put-Down, and Hope Dashed. The History of Ireland in two words: Ah well. The Invasion by the Vikings: Ah well. The Invasion by the Normans. The Flight of the Earls, Mr Oliver Cromwell. Daniel O’Connell, Robert Emmett, The Famine, Charles Stewart Parnell, Easter Rising, Michael Collins, Éamon De Valera, Éamon De Valera again (Dear Germany, so sorry to learn of the death of your Mr Hitler), Éamon De Valera again, the Troubles, the Tribunals, the Fianna Fáil Party, The Church, the Banks, the eight hundred years of rain: Ah well.

They believed that God was going to do for the whole cosmos what he had done for Jesus at Easter.

to say “Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy” is to lay our hope in the redeeming work of the God of  Easter as though our lives depended on it. Because they do. It means that we are an Easter people, a people who know that resurrection, especially in and among the least likely people and places, is the way that God redeems even the biggest messes we make 

Ignore her. She’ll leave eventually. I want inside of you,” he murmurs, his erection probing between my thighs. Her knocking persists as he braces himself above me and then plunges his cock inside. “Jesus,” I quietly cry out. “Eve, are you awake?” Margaret calls. Phoenix chuckles low and throaty and thrusts his hips, causing me to grasp at the sheets. “Oh, she’s awake alright,” he whispers with a smile. “Aren’t you, darling?” “You’re too cruel,” I moan. “She’s going to end up hearing us.” “I don’t care,” he answers, his mouth a hair’s breadth away from my earlobe. “In fact, I hope she does. It will teach her not to call to people’s houses at such ungodly hours in the future.” He pulls out fully before shoving back in deep. Air leaves my mouth in a loud exhale. “I told her I’d help at the Easter festival. I have to go down.” His grin is devious. “Not until I feel your tight little cunt squeeze my cock as you come.

Introduction THE TRUTH of the Second Coming of Jesus at the end of time has proved to be difficult for many Catholics to relate to. It is an area of theology that many find irrelevant to their everyday lives; something perhaps best left to the placard-wielding doom merchants. However, the clarity of this teaching is to be found throughout the pages of Sacred Scripture, through the Tradition of the Church Fathers, notably St. Augustine and St. Irenaeus, and in the Magisterium of the popes. A possible reason for this attitude of incredulity is the obvious horror at the prospect of the end of the world. In envisioning this end, the focus of many consists of an image of universal conflagration where the only peace is the peace of death, not only for man but the physical world also. But is that scenario one that is true to the plans of Divine Providence as revealed by Jesus? In truth it is not. It is a partial account of the wondrous work that the Lord will complete on the last day. The destiny of humanity and all creation at the end of time will consist of the complete renewal of the world and the universe, in which the Kingdom of God will come. Earth will become Heaven and the Holy Trinity will dwell with the community of the redeemed in an endless day illuminated by the light that is God—the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. I suspect that the ignorance of many stems from the lack of clear teaching coming from the clergy. There is no real reason for confusion in this area as the Second Vatican Council document, Lumen Gentium, and the Catholic Catechism make the authentic teaching very clear. With the knowledge that the end will give way to a new beginning, the Christian should be filled with hope, not fear, expectation, not apprehension. It is important to stress at this point that it is not my intention to speculate as to specific times and dates, as that knowledge belongs to God the Father himself; rather the intention is to offer the teachings and guidance of the recent popes in this matter, and to show that they are warning of the approaching Second Coming of the Lord. Pope Pius XII stated in his Easter Message of 1957: “Come, Lord Jesus. There are numerous signs that Thy return is not far off.” St. Peter warns us that “everything will soon come to an end” (1 Pet. 4:7), while at the same time exercising caution: “But there is one thing, my friends, that you must never forget: that with the Lord, a “day” can mean a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day” (2 Pet. 3:8). So let us leave the time scale open, that way controversy can be avoided and the words of the popes will speak for themselves.

Coming out of that Easter service, I felt hopeful and very happy. My heart felt at peace. It was inexplicable. What Vanya was felt about faith was the same thing I felt on that day. Whatever he was trying to describe, I could sense that finally. Out of my newfound faith, I had hope for what the future lay ahead. All the negative memories of my life went away, like mud washed down the river. I only felt positive about the future, looking forward to the days to come. It was the bright early morning of a new sunny day. Outside, the sky was beautiful. “Christ is Risen!” I confessed out loud, finally. “Christ is Risen, Indeed,” echoed a silent voice within. Epilogue: I like to think that the few lines above are the epilogue of the book to this days Faith as what makes “my heart go on” no matter the depressive moments that I now can feel, Faith gives me the courage to endure all kind of difficulties. One should always remember this small poem of mine. “God is for everybody” God is for everybody For the Russian For the French For all the others Even if they don’t wanted it. God is for everybody Not, only, for the Muslims Not, only, for the Christians Not, only, for the Buddhists Not — Even — only, for the Jews Not for one particular religion God is for everybody Especially for the one that do not want it.

Without faith we have no hope of the resurrection and we are for ever reliving Easter Saturday without the dawn rising on the Sabbath.

What’s more, Christmas itself has now far outstripped Easter in popular culture as the real celebratory center of the Christian year—a move that completely reverses the New Testament’s emphasis. We sometimes try, in hymns, prayers, and sermons, to build a whole theology on Christmas, but it can’t in fact sustain such a thing. We then keep Lent, Holy Week, and Good Friday so thoroughly that we have hardly any energy left for Easter except for the first night and day. Easter, however, should be the center. Take that away and there is, almost literally, nothing left.

Christopher Burney, the British officer who was held in Buchenwald and other German prison camps, was kept in solitary confinement for years during World War II. At first, he told himself he’d be out by Christmas. When Christmas passed, he hoped to be released by Easter. When that, too, passed and summer came, “I dismissed my old impatience from my mind,” he wrote in Solitary Confinement, “seeing such promise in the summer weather that no reservation, with its hidden pessimism, was now necessary…I could be patient for three more months.” That is the way a survivor thinks. When I was working in maximum-security prisons in the early 1980s, I remember one convict telling me, “I could do a nickel standing on my head.” When I asked how he did it, he said, “You got to stay inside yo’ mine.” That’s survivor thinking.

To meet with things newborn: for the Christian, that is the hope that burns brightly at Christmas, and Pentecost, and Easter.

The spreading out of garments likewise belongs to the tradition of Israelite kingship (cf. 2 Kings 9:13). What the disciples do is a gesture of enthronement in the tradition of the Davidic kingship, and it points to the Messianic hope that grew out of the Davidic tradition. The pilgrims who came to Jerusalem with Jesus are caught up in the disciples’ enthusiasm. They now spread their garments on the street along which Jesus passes. They pluck branches from the trees and cry out verses from Psalm 118, words of blessing from Israel’s pilgrim liturgy, which on their lips become a Messianic proclamation: “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is coming! Hosanna in the highest!” (Mk 11:9-10; cf. Ps 118:26). This acclamation is recounted by all four evangelists, albeit with some variation in detail. There is no need here to go into the differences, important though they are for “tradition criticism” and for the theological vision of the individual evangelists. Let us try merely to understand the essential outlines, especially since the Christian liturgy has adopted this greeting, interpreting it in the light of the Church’s Easter faith. First comes the exclamation “Hosanna!” Originally this was a word of urgent supplication, meaning something like: Come to our aid! The priests would repeat it in a monotone on the seventh day of the Feast of Tabernacles, while processing seven times around the altar of sacrifice, as an urgent prayer for rain. But as the Feast of Tabernacles gradually changed from a feast of petition into one of praise, so too the cry for help turned more and more into a shout of jubilation (cf. Lohse, TDNT IX, p. 682). By the time of Jesus, the word had also acquired Messianic overtones.

The husband business strikes Miss Sweetie as uncannily similar to the scramble that ensues during an Easter egg hunt, where the egg's only hope is to sit as prettily as possible so that the it will be picked up before it spoils

Anyway, all that aside, HAPPY Easter/Ramadan/Passover! We hope you had a wonderful time with your family over the weekend,

The point is simple: whatever reason God had for allowing evil and suffering, Christians believe that God got involved and fully participated in the tragedy and demands of human existence. And Good Friday is not the end; it is followed by Easter Sunday. So we affirm that in the midst of the tragic, there is always hope. There is always resurrection. There is always a way through.

The Easter Vigil by Stewart Stafford Nightfall on Easter Saturday, A church in darkness, Flickering fire through stained glass, Hope so close yet out of reach. The Paschal candle is lit outside from a small garden bonfire, And, in reverent procession, brought indoors, The flaming beacon makes its entrance at the rear of the congregation, The mother candle bows, bestowing blazing brows on the humbler candles of those assembled. The welcoming brightness gently spreads among the pews, Confusing darkness now a sea of light, United in illumination, And He is there. © Stewart Stafford, 2021. All rights reserved.

As many contemporary thinkers have pointed out, when you create an identity by despising other groups, it makes you dependent in many ways on them. Ironically, the “other” becomes part of who you are. You need for them to stay in their place and to fit your stereotypes of them. And if something threatens your one-dimensional, negative view of them, it shakes your very foundations. This is what brought Cain to kill Abel, and why Peter responded violently as well. Their false identity was shaken, and rather than change it and give it another foundation, they lashed out at the people who were endangering it.

Easter commissions Jesus’s followers for a task; Pentecost gives them the necessary equipment to accomplish it.

the Rite of Election, where the Church formally recognizes a person’s desire to become Catholic. The Sacraments of Initiation: For most people, the RCIA process reaches its climax at the Easter Vigil, where non-Christian catechumens receive baptism, confirmation, and the Eucharist. Catechumens from other Christian denominations with valid baptisms receive confirmation and the Eucharist. It is a joyous occasion that celebrates how God has brought his children into full communion with Christ’s “one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church.

By this he does not mean any kind of theocratic take-over by the church. Rather, he says that when Christians make the love of their neighbor and the glory of God the highest aims in their work, then in the fields of “science . . . art . . . the state . . . [and] commerce and industry” more just and right relationships will be established. People will not advance at one another’s expense, by living for their own glory. Rather people will flourish through inter-dependence and love.

No one seeks for God,” Paul wrote in Romans 3:10, meaning not that no one seeks for the divine and transcendent or for spirituality in general, but that no human being seeks the true God. We seek spirituality, but the human heart always wants a God who fits our desires, a God we can control, who doesn’t challenge our self-assessments and narratives.

With every word it seemed to Mary that her hopes were crashing around her ears. She had secretly believed that she was living in a dream world but having her dreams shattered so suddenly by a cruel complacency was like the twisting of a knife in her too vulnerable heart.

I am no longer afraid of death, I know well its dark and cold corridors leading to life. I am afraid rather of that life which does not come out of death, which cramps our hands and retards our march. I am afraid of my fear and even more of the fear of others, who do not know where they are going, who continue clinging to what they think is life which we know to be death! I live each day to kill death; I die each day to give birth to life, and in this death of death, I die a thousand times and am reborn another thousand through that love from my People, which nourishes hope!23

If something as dark as death is inevitable, why is it that something as magnificent as eternity is any less inevitable? Maybe it’s because we’ve come to define ‘inevitability’ based on the apathy of fear rather than the anticipation of faith.

Always standing between me and others is the presence of Christ - beside and within me. He packs the moments of Ordinary Time with the hope of Easter, the miracle of Advent, the light of Epiphany. But he does so in the middle of my Tuesday, one ordinary moment at a time.