from papa francis

The Hope of Easter

We, like Peter and the women, cannot discover life by being sad, bereft of hope.  Let us not stay imprisoned within ourselves, but let us break open our sealed tombs to the Lord- each of us know what they are….so that he may enter and grant us life.  Let us give Him the stones of our rancor and the boulders of our past, those heavy weaknesses and falls. Christ would like to come to take us by our hand out of our anguish.

 This is the first stone to be moved aside this night: the lack of hope which imprisons us within ourselves.  May the Lord free us from the trap. From being Christians without hope, who live as if the Lord were not risen, as if our problems were the center of our lives.

We see and will continue to see problems both within and without.  They will always be there. But today it is important to shed the light of the Risen Lord upon our problems, and, in a certain sense to “evangelize” them.  To evangelize our problems.  Let us not allow fear and darkness to distract us and control us; we must cry out to them: the Lord is not here, but has risen! (Lk 24:6)

He is our greatest joy; he is always at our side and will never let us down.

AMEN.

Image credit: my darling neice in CA.

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