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The resurrection of Jesus is the foundation of the apostles’ message, the keystone of the Christian faith, then and now.
Easter is a beginning, not an ending. And this Easter story from Thomas of Celano reminds us that for Francis, the challenge to remain true to the Gospel was one that needed to be renewed again and again.
Today we will celebrate Christ’s resurrection, as rightly we should. But the cleansing effect of our Lenten sacrifices can stay with us for however long we choose to remember them.
Remember, hope is not some vague belief that “all will work out well,” but biblical hope is the certainty that things finally have a victorious meaning no matter how they turn out. We learned that from Jesus, which gives us now the courage to live our lives forward from here.
As we come now to the celebration of Easter, we recall that one of the hallmarks of Francis’s life was a deep joy in the love of Christ and the glories of creation.
Dear friends, let us bring to Christ’s Cross our joys, our sufferings and our failures. There we will find a Heart that is open to us and understands us, forgives us, loves us and calls us to bear this love in our lives, to love each person, each brother and sister, with the same love.
For St. Francis, meditating on the Passion was not some medieval exercise in masochism but a means of uniting himself completely to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, a way of living so thoroughly into the mystery of Christ that he was able to lead others into this mystery.
As the Christian community reflected on today’s passage from Isaiah, it became clear that the figure being presented was Jesus, the servant of God.
Our unity is far from perfect, but today’s liturgy reminds us that if we are not always working toward that unity, then, like Judas, we are finding excuses to betray Christ’s ideals.
St. Francis was absolutely devoted to the Eucharist. It’s one of the reasons he was so concerned about rebuilding and cleaning local churches, making them suitable homes for the Eucharist.
