Acts 10.34a, 37-43・Psalm 118・1+2, 16+17, 22+23・1 Corinthians 5.6b-8・John 20.1-9
Easter Sunday is the best time we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Today is Easter Sunday and we come to celebrate with the community this so-called the peak of Christian calendar year. As Easter is considered to be the peak of Christian calendar, we understand here that while the Cross was the high point of Jesus` giving of Himself, His Resurrection, or shall we say, His entry into glory gives the Cross its (the cross`) validity. Our faith is deeply rooted in and is strengthened by His entry into glory (Resurrection). We all then continue to give highest value to the Cross validated by the Resurrection of Jesus.
We offer this day & these following days too (Octave of Easter) until Divine Mercy Sunday (2nd Sunday of Easter) with full of joy because of the Risen Christ. We are all invited to celebrate the life-giving triumph of Jesus over death and sin.
The first disciples of Jesus were paralyzed with fear prior to Jesus` Resurrection. The Resurrection gave them courage to boldly proclaim all about Jesus and their connection (association) with Him. They themselves, while remembering their own past experience of arrest, persecution, and imprisonment, with full of rejoicing at the same time because of the resurrection, realized that they became more closely associated with the life-experience of the Lord. This life-experience we are now talking here is not just the experience of suffering, but is of both suffering and glory. In this case, there was a complete turnaround from fear and anxiety towards understanding that they became sharers of both suffering and enter into glory of the Lord.
Our church in the modern world finds the experience of His first disciples similar to ours in modern times. In times we are not able to associate our daily sufferings to that of Jesus, we may just end-up sad, living in fear and anxiety. But we have Jesus in us who suffered, died on the Cross, and has Risen. That is why through our experience of pain and suffering and persecution while/in keeping Christian values, we become sharers in the pain and sufferings of Christ, and sharers at the same time in the glory of Jesus. Our daily experiences of pains and sufferings are not anymore fear and anxiety-forming experiences but of deep joy-forming experiences. So we say that we are Easter people who continue to embrace the Cross of Christ.
Happy Easter to all.