April 17, 2022

Reflection by Sister MT Summers, OSB, Prioress

Have you ever asked the question: did the Easter Miracle really happen the way it is written?

Then think, does the how really matter? It really is all about FAITH.

Faith is believing what cannot be seen.

Faith is believing when science cannot prove.

Faith is believing what seems impossible.

No one saw the actual “rising event.”

We only have the after story of what was found.

We only have the “Easter stories” of Jesus’ appearances to the women, the apostles, his other disciples, stories along a road to Emmaus, accounts in locked rooms, and narratives on the seashore.

It parallels the “big bang” theory. No one actually saw the event.

We only have stories as scientists put the evidence together about the last 13.8 billion years of evolution.

We believe that creation started by a remarkable uncontained energy.

Many of us believe the impetus within the energy was God, it was God’s love, it was God’s wisdom coming into being.

Was the same energy of Love that was behind the creation of the universe, the same in the tomb where they laid Jesus?

• That energy of love could not be contained in a rock, hewed out for a dead body.
• That energy had to burst forth because death does not have a hold over love.
• It may have a hold over fear but not love.
• Love cast off big stones that were used to keep the dead where they belong, entombed forever.

Love that lasts forever, is vastly different.

It cannot be contained, restrained, confined, limited, stymied, curtailed, imprisoned, muted.

It can only be released, reframed, recreated, liberated, freed, available, announced, circulated.

This Easter event invites us into a journey of resurrection, into this love, into deep faith.

Resurrection is more than being a faith event, it is an attitude-altering event.

• It brings life to all that we thought lost and hopeless.
• It blesses us with new vision and new possibilities.
• It breathes life into places where despair, emptiness, and

a void once existed.

Resurrection involves risk.

• Resurrection means handing power and control over to God, trusting God in the process.
  • Resurrection means stretching our hearts.
  • In resurrection we let go of a spirituality of scarcity and take on God’s spirituality of abundance.
  • With a resurrection attitude, we see God’s gracious, magnanimous love for each of us.

Easter Sunday confronts us with some challenging questions and invitations:

• Will we let God grow in us a big, huge, enthusiastic, plentiful heart?
• Will we accept the invitation to bring our despair and lifelessness, wants and burdens, attachments, and confusions – our whatever – to the place of resurrection?
• Will we risk allowing them to be transformed as God sees fit?

With the women, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary, mother of James, we too are invited to be the First Witness to those people that God has placed in our lives today; in order that they receive the gift of Jesus’ uncontainable love.

May we embrace with deep faith: the Resurrection in our lives and release, reframe, recreate, liberate, announce, circulate this uncontainable love with utter joy and complete freedom!

Happy Easter on this day of abundant blessings – CHRIST IS RISEN, IT IS OUR LEGACY.