Holy Week

No matter how deep your darkness gets, no matter how deep you feel buried by your sins, Jesus loves you and wants to dig you out. Jesus’ Resurrection proves that he is more than capable to rescue you. He desires that each one of us would be with him in heaven for eternity. That is not just good news - it’s the greatest news ever.
 
Watch the original footage of the tree well rescue that Fr. Bill talks about in his homily (contains occasional use of strong language).

Because of Jesus’ cross, because of where he’s gone on the cross, there is now no sin, no illness, no misfortune, no cruelty, no pain, no suffering – no matter how deep or dark or lonely – where God has not already gone, and now stands there watching for us, waiting to lift us up. Dear friends, we were lost – but now we are found.

A new commandment was given to us and demonstrated in the life of Jesus: we are to reorient our hearts and minds to serve and not be served. Will you encounter strange people? Yes. Will the process be messy? Yes. Will you more closely live out the commandment to love as Jesus loved? Yes.

Through Christ's suffering and death, he bound himself to us - to our own suffering. As you move through difficult times, take solace in the knowledge that God is near to you, intimately close, regardless if you can feel Him or not. It is in His Passion and Death on the cross that He can bring you through your own passion and death into eternal life - for there is no resurrection without the cross.

To be Eastered means that we accept and expect that our lives will have frustrations, setbacks, difficulties, and loss - along with many rich blessings - and that we accept and expect that we won't be exempted from any of that, any more than Jesus Himself wasn't exempted from that. That means that we must learn to live with the unknown and what we don't understand, trusting in God that He is actively present in the midst of everything that happens in our lives, the good stuff and the bad. Because of the Resurrection, it is our conviction that God's doors are never shut to us; that His mercy is never exhausted; that He always gives us another chance; that He will never, ever give up on us or on our world.

Think about some aspect of your life, or that of someone you are close to, that you would like Jesus - who intimately understands pain and suffering - to bring His light love to. It was His suffering and dying on the cross, and, ultimately, His resurrection, that transforms our experiences from being meaningless to being redemptive. And that's why, every year, we celebrate this particular Friday as "Good."

We all have parts of our life, of our personality, maybe even of our physical body, that reek, that we don’t like, that embarrass us, shame us, that we shield with anger or pride or defensiveness or other strategies. What the Lord shows to Peter - and to each of us, too - is that we don’t have to hide these things from Him. He didn’t come for the perfect; He works with who we are. And if we accept His mercy, His humble tending of our soul, we’ll find ourselves changing and our future opening up in ways we could never have expected.

As part of our daily prayer this Holy Week (and beyond!), let's pray that we can imitate Jesus and be the kind of filter that filters out the negativity and brings only kindness, thoughtfulness, compassion, graciousness, and forgiveness. Let's pray that the Holy Spirit will do that work within us, so that we, the whole community of us, can go out and change this world one encounter at a time - the same way Jesus did.