A Lectio Divina Approach to the Sunday Liturgy
BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD (Series 7, n. 20)
Easter Sunday, Year B – April 12, 2009
“EASTER: A Feast of Renewal and Salvation”
BIBLE READINGS
Acts 10:34a, 37-43 // Col 3:1-4 or I Cor 5:6b-8 // Jn 20:1-9
(N.B. Series 7 of BREAKING THE BREAD OF THE WORD: A LECTIO DIVINA APPROACH TO THE SUNDAY LITURGY includes a prayerful study of the Sunday liturgy of Year B from the perspective of the Second Reading. For other reflections on the Sunday liturgy of Year B, please go to the PDDM Web Archives: WWW.PDDM.US and open Series 1 & 4.)
I. BIBLICO-LITURGICAL REFLECTIONS
EASTER! This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. This is the solemnity of solemnities in which we bask in the glory of the Risen Lord. In Christ the Risen Lord, we are renewed. In the triumphant Christ, we believe that all shall be well. The ancient writer Epiphanius exclaims: “This is our greatest feast, one that is celebrated by all the world, a feast of renewal and salvation … In Christ all is made new: There is a new creation … a new people of God … a new divine covenant. We too must be renewed today; we must renew a right spirit within our hearts and so prepare to enter into the mysteries of this new and perfect feast and to exult in this day’s heavenly joy.”
The two Pauline texts proposed for the Second Reading (one may choose either Col 3:1-4 or I Cor 5:6b-8) underline the effect of Easter in our lives and our corresponding responsibility as an Easter people. We need to set our hearts on the things that are in heaven where Christ sits on his throne at the right side of God and to keep our minds fixed on things there, not on things here on earth (Col 3:1-2). We believe that in Christ who rose from the dead we have died to our sins and that our real life is in him. Moreover, we need to celebrate this Easter feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth and get rid of the old yeast of sin and wickedness (I Cor 5:8) that corrupts our life. The Easter celebration is an opportune moment to live our true identity as a people redeemed, healed, restored and renewed by Christ’s life-giving sacrifice on the cross. The newness of Easter must mean newness in our lives. We must live as those who share in the victory of the risen Jesus Christ. Furthermore, the Easter event invites us to a life marked by the sign of hope.
Harold Buetow comments: “Christians see help against despair in the celebration of Easter. The resurrection of our Lord is the central mystery of our faith, our chief festival of life. It gives hope to those who have lost it. It is the day in which Jesus snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, vindicated his life and teachings, and confirmed our faith. It is the most exciting event of world history. It is not only an event that happened once in the past; it is the power of God that is seen constantly in people’s inner experience of newness of life. The resurrection is a sign of God’s loving interest in our world. All that we do on this day shows our joy and our hope: coloring Easter eggs, wearing nice clothes, dining together. Other Sundays are all little Easters. They celebrate the same ideas, which are at the heart of the Christian faith.”
Indeed, the good news of the rising of Jesus Christ to new life enables us to cope with the sufferings that continue to come our way as an Easter people until our definitive participation in the paschal victory at the end time. As I prepare this Easter reflection, I am personally dealing with the pain of having a dear younger brother terminally ill with cancer and with a series of deaths in the family (my mom, my uncle, my sister-in-law’s mom) in recent months. The power of the Lord’s resurrection keeps my faith alive and enables me to trust in his sacrificial love that gives life. In the light of the Easter mystery, we perceive the momentary sorrows and sadness as “good grief”. As we feel the undercurrent of Christ’s radical victory over sin and death, God gives us strength; he makes our feet as swift as those of hinds and enables us to go upon the heights.
Elizabeth Peale Allen of the Positive Thinkers Club and the daughter of the great preacher Norman Vincent Peale asserts that Jesus’ resurrection is a promise to us that we can find hope and renewed life no matter what circumstance life presents to us. The following is her beautiful Easter reflection that is sure to inspire us (cf. POSITIVE THINKERS Newsletter, April 2007, p. 3-4).
One of life’s most wrenching changes – as I know only too well – is the loss of a spouse. My father wrote movingly about bereavement and how to cope with it, with God’s help in his sermon “Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled”: “One mistake grieving people often make is to assume that the departed loved one has lost more than he has gained. He has lost physical life, but why shouldn’t we believe that the next life is far more marvelous? The Bible insists that it is. ‘Eye has not seen’, wrote St. Paul, ‘nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.’ And Revelation promises that ‘they shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore … and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.’”
Daddy understood, however, that the promise of reunion in eternity is little consolation for the loneliness on earth without our loved one. He had important advice about this: “The most important step in facing sorrow is to ask Jesus Christ to assuage your anguish and believe that He does so. The greatest antidote to grief is to believe that Christ can and will administer His healing balm to your wounded heart.”
Also my father prescribed the Bible as spiritual medicine. “I think it has to be a massive dose”, he advised. “A verse or two or a chapter or two isn’t enough. It’s like an antibiotic that a doctor prescribes, doubling the first dose so that the healing agent can get into the bloodstream quickly and fight the infection. And the reason people have turned to it over the centuries is the reason why any good medicine is prescribed and sought after. It works. It heals wounded minds and hearts.”
Even though you’re grieving, it’s very important to continue with normal life just as soon as you can. But sometimes people get stuck. Daddy told a story about a woman who sat in the lobby of a New York hotel on the days that the Rotary met there because that was a way of feeling close to her late husband. “Wait for me until after the meeting”, Daddy told her one day, “because I have something to say to you.” When the lunch was over, he took her by the arm and led her to a taxi. “Where are we going?” she asked. “We’re going down to my church,” he told her. “There are some overworked women there addressing envelopes. They need help, and you’re going to give it to them.” She meekly came along and later told me that the companionship and usefulness that she got eased her grief more than anything else.
Of course it did! The human mind can only hold one thought at a time. So if you are busy and useful there is less room in your mind for inward-focused grief. It’s not disloyal to try to diminish that pain. Your loved one would be the first to urge you to do so.
In this Easter season I think about the enormous change that Jesus had to endure in his brutal transition from life to death. He did not shrink from it. Instead, He offered for us a model of how to greet change, even the most fearsome change, when he said, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will, not mine” (Mt 26:39). Jesus’ resurrection is a promise to us that we can find hope and renewed life no matter what circumstance life presents to us.
Many of us know the first few lines of the following prayer by theologian Reinhold Neibuhr, but the whole prayer offers a beautiful inspiring way to think about change and to accept it in our lives:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time,
enjoying one moment at a time,
accepting hardships as the pathway to peace,
taking as He did, this sinful world as it is,
not as I would have it;
trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His will;
that I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him forever in the next.
Amen.
II. POINTS FOR THE EXAMINATION OF THE HEART
Do I realize that I have died and been raised with Christ, and that I am saved, healed and restored to new life by the power of his resurrection?
How do I respond to the gift of Easter? Do I clear out the old yeast of wickedness and sinfulness and celebrate the Easter festival with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth?
Do I live my life under the sign and regimen of hope? In the pain and grief that we experience even as an Easter people, do we believe that Jesus’ resurrection is a promise that we can find hope and renewed life no matter what circumstance life presents to us?
III. PRAYING WITH THE WORD
Leader: Loving Father,
we firmly believe in the good news
of your Son Jesus Christ’s victory over sin and death
by the power of his resurrection.
We likewise believe that in him
we have died to sin and been raised to newness of life.
As an Easter people,
we live in your love and are consecrated to your service.
May we always partake of the Easter feast
and be nourished by the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
At the eternal feast of your kingdom with the Paschal Lamb,
may we sing the “Alleluia” of joyful praises to your glory,
forever and ever.
Assembly: Amen.
IV. INTERIORIZATION OF THE WORD
The following is the bread of the living Word that will nourish us throughout the week. Please memorize it.
“If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.” (Col 3:1-4)
V. TOWARDS LIFE TRANSFORMATION
ACTION PLAN: Pray that the Easter joy and peace be poured upon those who grieve and are distressed. By your witness of self-giving and active charity for the poor and vulnerable, let the people around you experience the healing power of the Lord’s resurrection.
ACTION PLAN: To help us contemplate the wonder of Easter and thank God for the gift of Christ’s victory over sin and death, make an effort to spend an hour in Eucharistic Adoration. Visit the PDDM WEB site (www.pddm.us) for the EUCHARISTIC ADORATION THROUGH THE LITURGICAL YEAR: A Weekly Pastoral Tool (Year B, vol. 5, # 20).
Prepared by Sr. Mary Margaret Tapang PDDM
PIAE DISCIPULAE DIVINI MAGISTRI
SISTER DISCIPLES OF THE DIVINE MASTER
60 Sunset Ave., Staten Island, NY 10314
Tel. (718) 494-8597 // (718) 761-2323
Website: WWW.PDDM.US