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Paschal Joy Shared, Paschal Joy Multiplied

We learned in grade school that if you have three apples and you give one to your friend, you are left with two apples – you’re possession of created goods has decreased.  Yet, with spiritual goods, this is not true!  In fact, with God, the more you share, the more you have and if you try to keep spiritual goods for yourself, what little you have slips through your fingers.

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Overcome With Paschal Joy: Living in the Fullness of Grace

Alleluia!  He is risen!  Are you still overcome with Paschal joy?  Nearly every day at Mass during the Easter season, if we pay close attention, we hear those words during the preface of the Eucharistic liturgy: “…overcome with Paschal joy…”  So how come many of us feel more relief that Lent is over and a bit of anxiety over what to do about all the Easter candy in the house with shorts season right around the corner?

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Alleluia! He is risen!!

The chapel is dark and hushed.  We've processed inside from the Easter fire, holding our lighted candles.  In darkness we stood for the Exultet, listened to excerpts from the Scriptures telling our salvation history, responding in psalms and prayers.  Then the  moment comes: the sounds of the Gloria swells, the bells peal, the lights come on and all the sisters cast off their black copes, revealing the full white of the Dominican habit. 

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Love Stands By

What was that Saturday morning like for Mary?  Just yesterday, she stood by at the foot of His cross, unable to take Him in her arms as she did when he was a small boy.  To brush his locks of hair from his sweaty brow and offer him a drink like she did when he was a young man, working as a carpenter in Joseph’s shop.  He looked at her, she looked at him.  It reminded her of their first look so long ago in that stable in Bethlehem when He was born and she wrapped Him in swaddling cloths and laid Him in a rough-hewn manger.  Now they looked at each other as he was stretched out on a rough-hewn cross, soon to be wrapped in burial cloths and laid in a cold, dark tomb.  But these two looks held eternity… and then he gave her the next phase of her mission, her motherhood: “Behold your son.”  And with that, she went to live with John in his house. 

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Abiding in Love

Of all the fears and pain we face, there is one we find most terrible.  Yet no matter how hard we try, we cannot escape from it: the pain of loneliness, isolation, abandonment.  To feel unwanted and unloved.  As He was fully human, this was part of the pain Jesus underwent throughout His passion, beginning in the garden of Gethsemane.  His pain of loneliness and abandonment reaches to the depths of human suffering when He cries out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”

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Loving to the End

What would you do if you knew today would be your last?  That during the night, one of your closest friends would betray you to others who would see that you suffered a cruel and painful death?  Would you gather with your friends for one final farewell?  Would you have one more adventure, one more thrill?  Would you throw up your hands, cry out to God?  Would you try to seek out your betrayer before you were betrayed?  What would you do?

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