ALLELUIA!!! JESUS CHRIST IS RISEN!!! LET US REJOICE AND GLAD! Leap for joy and exalt his name. We are Easter people and our song is Alleluia! This is the greatest mystery of our faith. If the tomb was not empty our faith would be in vain. Easter Sunday and Easter season is the best time to renew our faith. This is a time of hope and joy. We are called to share the joy of Easter every day and everywhere. The Easter season leads us to Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit. I think we all need to improve in our spirit of prayer and worship. And there is room for improvement in all of us. How do we grow strong in our faith? How will we experience the joy of Easter? How can we have the peace of the Risen Lord bestowed upon His apostles? One of the ways is through our active participation in our worship. How active are you in your Sunday worship? When we begin our Sunday Holy Mass, the Church is almost empty, but by the time of the Gospel reading, the church is full of people. When I look from the altar, I see a lot of you who don’t respond to the prayers. I feel a little indifferent. Do you know one of the greatest sins of this day is “indifference?” With our indifference we can really kill our faith and also the life of our parish family. I remember a poem written by G. A. Studdert-Kennedy.
When Jesus came to Golgatha,
They hanged Him on a tree,
They drove great nails through hands and feet, And made a Calvary.
They crowned Him with a crown of thorns,
Red were His wounds and deep,
For those were crude and cruel days,
And human flesh was cheap.
When Jesus came to Birmingham
They simply passed Him by,
They never hurt a hair of Him,
They only let Him die;
For men have grown more tender,
And they would not give Him pain,
They only just passed down the street,
And left Him in the rain.
And still it rained the winter rain
That drenched Him through and through;
The crowd went home and left the streets
Without a soul to see,
And Jesus crouched against a wall.
And cried for Calvary.
Jesus Christ, our Risen Lord, comes to us in our participation at the Sunday worship. But I feel many times we leave Him unnoticed. When the priest greets you saying “The Lord be with you” at the beginning of the Holy Mass, in truth and spirit, Jesus is with us. He comes to us in the readings and explanation of Scripture and more especially He comes to us through the breaking of the Bread. We should be God filled people as we leave the church. We have to sing and pray loudly and participate in the mysteries of our redemption with full concentration and full heart and mind. When we share peace, it should be a peace that comes out of forgiving love. Every day hundreds of our brothers and sisters in various parts of the world are being brutally killed for being a Christian. Let us take our faith a little more seriously. Let us be proud of being a Catholic. Let us never be ashamed of praying our prayers loudly. Each Holy Mass is a time for renewal and spiritual nourishment. Don’t leave Church as if nothing happened. We have to make sure we are leaving with the Lord as we go out of the Church after Holy Mass.