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2024 Easter Moments – Holy Week and Easter

Holy Week and Easter
Walking on Holy Ground

Stay close with Christ this week and remember we have spent time with Christ in the desert, and now we are preparing for the walk with Jesus to Calvary to relive his passion, death and resurrection.

Holy Thursday is a reflection on God’s love for us. At the Last Supper… “the Eucharistic table, Christ fashions us into a community of love entering into the world, offering this same love in abundance to all, especially those rejected and, marginalised by others” (ACBC, Listen, Learn, Love, 17).

HOW DO YOU BUILD A TABLE OF WELCOME AND LOVE?

On Good Friday we venerate the cross of Jesus Christ. The cross bridges all contradictions and opposites: heaven and earth, light and dark, man and woman, the conscious and the subconscious. If a person wants to become whole … their path must go via the cross (Fr Anselm Grun, Finding Your Treasure, 2020).

WHICH PATH HAVE YOU WALKED VIA THE CROSS?

Holy Saturday evokes much about the human condition. It helps us examine the ways we are called to let go of things, people, identities, or securities. We wonder what will rise up out of the ashes of our lives (Christine Valders Paintner, Soul of the Pilgrim).

HOW HAVE YOU BEEN CALLED TO LET GO ON YOUR LIFE JOURNEY?

Easter Sunday is a time of uninterrupted joy and feast as “we celebrate Easter so that the life of the resurrected Christ may rise up in us as well; so that the resurrection of Jesus may break open everything in us that has become rigid and unyielding; so that the angel, may roll away the stone blocking our path (Fr Anselm Grun, Finding Your Treasure, 2020).

HOW WILL YOU ALLOW THE STONE BLOCKING YOUR PATH TO BE ROLLED AWAY?

On Easter Monday, the Catholic Church celebrates what’s called “Monday of the Angel” where the tomb is found to
be empty (Luke 24:3), the body gone, and the women are told by angels “He is not here; for He is risen…” (Matthew 28:5-6).

It is Mary Magdalene, the evangelist John details, to whom Jesus appears first after the resurrection. It is Mary Magdalene who is instructed to proclaim the Easter message to others. It is Mary Magdalene whom Jesus commissions to “tell Peter and the others that I have gone before them into Galilee.” It is Mary Magdalene who sees the Risen Christ. … She calls all of us to faith and fortitude, to unity and universalism, to a Christianity that rises above sexism, and a commitment to the things of God that surmounts every obstacle and surpasses every system (Joan Chittister, A Passion For Life).

HOW DO YOU PROCLAIM THE EASTER MESSAGE TO OTHERS?

 God of the Journey,
 May this Easter season
 challenge us to a change of heart:
 to live gently, to love generously,
 to count blessings and to walk paths of peace
 and inclusion.

 Amen

Artwork by: Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr. “The Road to Calvary” © 2024 Miriam-Rose Ungumerr | facebook.com/miriamrosefoundation |miriamrosefoundation.org.au

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