Blog # 143 40 Days of Easter

Blog # 143 40 Days of Easter As we draw close to the conclusion of our celebration of the 40 Days of Easter it would be good to check on our awareness of the value and purpose of our extensive celebration of the Feast. As with Christmas, the Ascension of Our Lord into Heaven, and Pentecost, our celebration of the life death and Resurrection of Jesus in the liturgy is an official way Jesus in the Church invites us to identify with Him in the mission given Him by the Father to sanctify the world and ourselves as individual unique Christian believers. As Jesus stayed with the disciples forty days after His Resurrection from the dead, He is doing the same for us in our annual liturgical experience these several weeks. We celebrate these forty days as the 'days of Easter' almost as though it were all one great day lived in the presence of the risen Lord. All around us the rest of the world goes secular and Easter is almost all but forgotten until it occurs again next Spring. But through the Scriptural readings at Mass and through the effect these readings can have on our thoughts and prayers, the Church hopes to help us grow in our awareness of the meaning and power of the Lord's Resurrection today. As we travel through the forty days it might be helpful to ask ourselves several simple questions about the death and resurrection of Jesus, then, in history, and now, by faith, in us today. The questions are these: Who? When? Where? And What? Who is Jesus? Who are we? When did Jesus die/rise? When in us does He die and rise? Where in history? Where in our lived experience? What happened? What did Jesus do? What happens in us through faith and Baptism? What is the call of Baptism in our life today? What was Jesus sent to say and do among us? What are we in His name called and empowered to say and do? These are significant questions. They could be the basis of significant growth in our relationship with the Lord and one another and in the quality of our personal and communitarian holiness. Let's work on them together as we continue to celebrate together the presence of the Risen Lord among us.