He is Risen!  Alleluia!  Alleluia!   Alleluia!  On behalf of myself & our entire parish staff, please know of our prayers for a most blessed Easter season!

  Even though we are celebrating & remembering today Jesus’ rising from the tomb, the reality we find ourselves facing is that we are still stuck in the tomb.  In fact we have been stuck in the tomb for just over a year now.  This pandemic has, in so many ways, disrupted & changed our lives.  Even though we are celebrating Easter, it seems like last year’s Lent & this year’s Lent have just blended together to form one long Lenten season, a year full of penance & fasting.  I remember last Lent we started out with everyone at Mass & then at all of Holy Week & Easter I was celebrating Mass in a basically empty Church.  Thank God that we are able to celebrate together again!  Yes, we celebrate in a temporarily changed way, but I’d rather celebrate in this way with you rather than in a Church full of empty pews. 

  As much as this pandemic has changed & altered our lives, so too this Easter feast is meant to change us.  Those women who came to the tomb that first Easter morning, the Scriptures tell us, were afraid.  Why were they afraid?  Why were they not running back to the disciples full of joy to proclaim the good news?  Well, maybe it was because they realized what the fact that Jesus had been raised meant.  It meant that their lives were going to have to change.  Everything that Jesus had preached & taught was true & while they had let Him change them when He was with them before the resurrection, now they needed to allow Him to change them even more. 

  If we truly believe that the tomb is empty.  I certainly do, & I hope that you do as well.  But if we truly believe that reality that Christ is alive then we must continue to allow it & Him to change us, and yes, there very well might be some fear of what that might mean, what that change might entail.  It’s not just a one time change either, it’s a lifetime journey of change.  And so, while we might hope & pray that we can return soon to the “way things were,” if Easter is real for us (& I pray it is) then we can’t return from the tomb to the “way things were,” we must be changed!  Be not afraid, but instead, come out of the tomb & be changed!

A Happy & Blessed Easter!