Scripture Reflection - April 20, 2025

Easter Sunday

Acts 10:34a, 37-43 | Colossians 3:1-4    | 1 Corinthians 5:6b-8    | John 20:1-9

Risen! What do I believe?

In the first reading for the Mass of Easter this day, we hear these words in the powerful preaching of Peter, "They put him to death by hanging him on a tree. God raised him on the third day, and granted that he be visible to us, who ate and drank with him…  He commissioned us to preach to the people." ( Acts 10 34 ff).

The Feast of Easter resounds with alleluias but also complex and demanding questions upon which our Christian faith and discipleship are rooted. One question is, "Do I  believe that as Jesus was raised from death to life, I, too, will rise?" Another question is, "What does it mean to rise from death anyway?"

We are all familiar with these questions. For most of us, they have intoned more loudly in us than alleluias when we have accompanied our parents, siblings, friends, and community members on their journey into death. Within these moments, we have often found ourselves in that solemn, sacred space carved by grief's bewilderment and only sporadic reveries of hope. Whether we acknowledge it or not, these moments always demand a response from us, "do I believe?"

The scriptures are not all that clear about what happened to Jesus' body after burial. But where the evidence of resurrection resides is in his followers' ongoing experience of his abiding presence with them. From their experience of his risen-ness within and around them, they became bolder in their preaching. They began to know that their own deaths would never mean the annihilation of their lives in God but a future flourishing, which they could now imagine and were called to proclaim. In other words, "they believed."

As I behold Springtime here on Ireland's eastern shore,  I am noticing the miracle of resurrection all around me. I see the greening of the land and the audacity of life forms breaking their entombment in hardened shells. They become new life in forms that stretch upward from cold soil toward the Irish sun's random but power-laden appearances. I walk every day among the beauty of budding flowers and vibrant vegetables. Each and all illuminate the vital force I know as God's abiding and vivifying love that continues to bring about unimaginable flourishing-- new life.

The Easter story of resurrection is primarily about this vital force. This is the same energy that flared forth a universe, brought about stars and galaxies, planet Earth, and new life forms everywhere. This vital force brought forth from our human species, Jesus of Nazareth. In him, and in the evidence around us this sacred season, we witness the power and resurrecting energy of the Creator's love .

This Easter season, take time to look within and around you. Notice what is rising up from entombment to life. Let the word "RISEN" ring out in you today and throughout this season.

What experiences of resurrection do you recognize?

Now, ask yourself? "Do I believe?"

Sr. Arlene Flaherty, OP