[Monday Motivation]
“The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!” (Luke 24:34)
Happy Easter!
We hope you had a blessed Easter day.
And now we embark on Easter Season – 50 days of celebrating Christ’s resurrection.
In a certain sense, Easter spans 365 days – the profound implications of Christ’s resurrection are something we are meant to experience and explore each day of the year.
A traditional Easter greeting is, “He is Risen!” to which the response is, “He is Risen, indeed!” This is probably based on Luke 24:34, quoted above. It is a beautiful greeting but omits an important facet of that scripture. Christ didn’t only rise – He returned. Christ could have conceivably risen from the dead and left us miserable creatures, the ones who crucified Him, to our own fate. But He didn’t do that. He rose from the dead so that He could return and finish his mission of redemption and salvation; so that He could have a personal encounter with each and every one of us.
Had it not been for the Resurrection, Christ would have only been present to those He encountered while he walked the earth. It is through the Resurrection (and the eventual descent of His Spirit) that Christ breaks through all barriers of time and space, life and death – so that he can appear to us as He “appeared to Simon” – particularly in our soul, through meditation.
In His wisdom, Christ (through His Church) gives us Easter each year as a source of tremendous grace – to renew, revitalize and deepen our faith. But in the words of St. Ignatius of Loyola, we are meant to taste anew the glory of Easter each time we enter into mental prayer.
And since we are called to visit with Christ each day in meditation, 364 additional experiences of Easter – of Christ not only risen, but appearing to each of us – await.
Easter blessings –
Steve and Karen Smith
Interior Life