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A certain hope
Dear Friends,
If you could go back in a time machine, to which episode in Jesus' life
would it be? Maybe to kneel with the shepherds at the crib in Bethlehem?
Or, perhaps, to sit listening to his Sermon on the Mount in Galilee, or
even standing with Mary and John at the foot of the Cross? I think I
would choose Jesus' appearance to his disciples in the upper room after
his resurrection.
It took his disciples some time to cotton on the fact that the man in
front of them was the same Jesus they had known before, yet he was also
different. So different in fact that his return opened up to them all
sorts of mind blowing possibilities, which were literally out of this
world.
Perhaps there is a parallel between the Easter story and our own
situation? The past year has been extraordinary hard, even harrowing for
many and marked by terrible loss of all kinds. When, eventually we
emerge from lockdown, it will be into the same world, yet also a very
different world to the one we left a year ago. For more than one reason.
Easter teaches us that nothing is wasted in God's economy. Good Friday
assures us that God knows and feels our pain and yet impossible as it
may seem, he is able to transfigure it, to turn around even the
tragedies and losses of this past year and wrestle good from evil.
But we do not have to travel back in a time machine to find the risen
Jesus in an upper room. For every day is Easter Day: the risen Jesus is
always with us; his resurrection power is here for the asking, his power
to set us free, 'transforming the poverty of our nature by riches of his
grace' and that should give us hope: hope that 'all shall be well and
all shall eb well and all manner of things shall be well. 'Our hope is
based not on a fable or fantasy, but on historical certainty, that a man
rose bodily from the dead on that first Easter day. And that changes
everything. Yes, everything.
A very happy Easter to you all!
Fr Kevin. |
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Fr
Kevin writes...
