Holiday Celebrations in Christianity   

On this page we will collect and make available resources about Christian faith holiday celebrations.

Here's what's available now:

Christmas Guide-Document contains both of the articles listed below:

• Advent 2009: The End of the World As We Know It by JONATHAN WILSON-HARTGROVE
• Twelve Gifts in Hard Times by AL FRITSCH
• EASTER Articles:    
  ^Reclaiming Lent for Justice  ^Holy Thursday
    ^Walter Wink: What Happened to Jesus   ^Joseph McCloskey SJ: Teh Spriitual Meaning of the Resurrection  ^Preparing for Easter  ^Alana Price: A Humanist Celebration of Easter

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Lent

 

Reclaiming Lent for justice

Lent is viewed by many Christians as a time to regain a sense of personal piety. We “give up” small pleasures as a form of spiritual cleansing and repentance. Unfortunately, this can turn into a somewhat self-serving exercize, something Martin Luther warned against.

“In Luther's perspective, we shouldn't be spending time and energy doing ‘false spiritual work’,” says Dr. Gordon Jensen, Assistant Professor of Reformation History and Theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon. “Since it is God who justifies us, we should celebrate God’s work by being a neighbour to our neighbours.”

Lent is a time to slow down, to step back, says Jensen, to reflect and call things what they are. That includes examining broken relationships—both personal and corporate—and endeavouring to restore them.

Following here are a number of suggested Lenten activities to help us focus on injustices that have been perpetrated to ensure our way of life:

1.      Investigate the human cost of putting coffee into your cup. As an alternative to giving up drinking coffee for Lent, purchase fair-trade coffee for yourself and for coffee-drinking friends. Encourage a discussion about fair and just trade. A visit to www.transfair.ca might help.

2.      During the 40 days of Lent, post a photo or a quote on your refrigerator to remind you to pray for the needs of people in bondage to hunger. Visit the Lutheran World Federation website www.lutheranworld.org to learn how to assist those working to relieve world hunger.

3.      Go through your closet and give away at least five pieces of unused clothing before Easter. Learn to live with less. Reflect on what guides your purchasing habits. Visit www.adbusters.org

4.      Attend to relationships that matter. Decide to do something as a family or friends other than watch television. Take a walk together, talk with each other or play a game. Visit http://adbusters.org/campaigns/tvturnoff/

5.      Eat your evening meals by candlelight, and discuss other ways to conserve energy. Visit the Inter-Church committee on Ecology at www.web.net

6.      Much healing is still needed in the relationship between aboriginal and non-aboriginal Canadians.  Examine your prejudices.  Attend a public cross-cultural activity such as a Pow-Wow. Visit www.turning-point.ca

7.      Make a pledge as a family to integrate the awareness brought about during Lent.  Resolve to continue to practice good habits discovered during Lent. Check out suggestions at www.simpleliving.org

"As Lutherans we know we can't bring about justice by ourselves,” says Pastor Jensen. “When it happens, justice is always God's action—a sign of God breaking into our world, bringing life where the only reality seems to be death.  But we want to be a part of that life, and we will pray for it."

And that, after all, is what Lent is all about: a time to prepare ourselves for a celebration of the Easter resurrection.

Holy Thursday 

A talk given at Ecce Homo convent in Jerusalem's Old City.
 
Donald Moore, sj
 
Holy Thursday 2010
 
Jean Vanier, founder of L’Arche and whom many of you know, reminds us that our Christian life is not a flight from the world of pain and matter, but a mission into that world to love people as Jesus loves them. These words capture so much of what we celebrate this evening as we enter into the solemn liturgical commemoration of the Paschal Mystery of Jesus. It is a mystery that begins with the immersion of Jesus into the world of pain and matter, of suffering and sorrow. Having loved his own in the world, he would now show them the extent of his love. His is a love unto death. And our participation in this Paschal Triduum is also our affirmation that our Christian life is in no way a flight from that world which surrounds us with all of its demands and disappointments, its joy and beauty. We immerse ourselves into this world because as followers of Jesus Christ, we have no other option.
 
In a similar vein, we turn to the renowned theologian, Edward Schillebeekx. In one of the last conferences to his Dominican family before his death six months ago, he reminded them that extra mundum nulla salus: outside the world there is no salvation. We are accustomed to hear that outside the Church there is no salvation. Father Schillebeekx, like Jean Vanier, would have us center our lives on this bruised and battered world for which Jesus suffered and died. Jesus has come not to condemn the world, but to save the world. He too was (and is) deeply concerned with our world.
 
In our gospel this evening Jesus gathers with his disciples for one final meal, a Passover meal so sacred to his Jewish faith. There he manifests to his disciples and to us how we are to save this broken world which is yours and mine. Remember, these are the words and actions of one who knows he is about to die, who is “aware that he had come from God and was returning to God,” So what does Jesus do? He lays aside his outer garments (as he would soon lay aside his life), pours water into a basin, girds himself with a towel, and washes the feet of his disciples. A strange way to save the world! Jesus here embodies the truth of what he had tried to convey to them earlier in his ministry: Whoever would be great among you, must serve the others, and whoever would be first among you, must be the slave of all. The Son of man has come not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. In this act of humble service Jesus is also expressing the truth of our human condition: our humanity is intimately bound up with service. (What that service might be is for each of us to discern.) You shall know the truth, he had told them, and the truth will set you free. Jesus has come to liberate us from all that ties us down to self, to help us achieve the freedom to let go of everything in order to make of ourselves a gift to others, a gift to our world. This is precisely what Jesus is about to do as he freely accepts suffering and death. He maintains his fidelity not to his own will, “but to the will of the one who sent me.” In his washing of the feet Jesus is not only making one last gift of himself to his disciples, but he is also saying in effect: If this chalice can not pass me by, then not my will but yours be done. Gethsemene is not present in John’s gospel, but the whole spirit of Gethsemene is embodied in the washing of the feet. Jesus is letting go of everything for the world, for his sisters and brothers, and above all for his Abba-God.
 
Then Jesus turns to his disciples and reminds them: "If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another's feet.  I have given you a model to follow..."   There is so much to learn from this scene. I would suggest that we immerse ourselves in it. Let us follow with our heart these words and actions of Jesus. What a strange way to begin a Passover meal --  to wash the feet of the guests! We note the loving gaze of Jesus on these chosen disciples, the gentle touch as he pours the water and dries each foot, the eagerness and love with which he performs this duty of a slave. And let us remember: “This man is going to die for me.”  Perhaps Jesus is reminding us that when all else has passed away, the only things remaining will be the marks ands signs of my service and love, reminding us that we must become gift as he has become gift, as this Eucharist becomes gift: “My flesh for the life of the world.”
With our Lord and Master we commit ourselves to the life of the world, to the world entrusted to us here and now in the Holy Land, with its tensions and violence, its joys and beauty, its oppression and injustice. Along with the Christian leaders who authored the recent Kairos Document, A Moment of Truth, we cry out from within the sufferings of this land, sufferings rooted in occupation, in checkpoints, in daily humiliations, in the random firing of rockets, in the Wall, in demolitions. As followers of Christ we bring to this world a message of faith and hope and love. We cry out with faith in a loving and compassionate God who hears our plea in the midst of our distress. We cry out with hope and conviction that this present situation cannot endure and that God will support our steadfast efforts to change the reality in which we find ourselves. We cry out with love, a love and respect for the dignity of all our sisters and brothers. Jesus, emptying himself for us in his passion and death has revealed the depth of God’s love. It is in the spirit of this love that we are called to resist the evil in our world, to oppose all that smacks of injustice, oppression, racism. If we accept violence and injustice and simply stand by and do nothing, professing powerlessness, then we have abandoned our Christian faith. Our faith calls on us to resist evil, yet never to lose sight of the dignity of the one who commits evil. This is a difficult task that Jesus confers on us, especially here in this Land – a struggle rooted in love and with the consciousness of our own fallibility. In the washing of the feet in tonight’s gospel, we recall again that Jesus takes on the form of a slave: there is no arrogance, no finger-pointing, no pride here, only a loving service that pleads for understanding and imitation. When Peter exclaims: You will NEVER wash my feet, Jesus replies: Then you can have no part in me. In other words:  Peter, unless you can empty yourself of all your pride and self-righteousness, then forget about being my disciple. Lord, cries Peter, not only my feet, but wash all of me! Such total devotion and love was Peter’s, yet his was a love that would still know failure.

The question of Jesus to his disciples at the end of the gospel is also a question addressed to us: Do you realize what I have done for you? If so, then go and do likewise. Wash one another’s feet. Make of your lives a total emptying of self and a gift to one another, a gift to your world, a gift above all to your loving and compassionate God. Our Christian lives, as Jean Vanier pointed out, are not a flight from the world of pain and doubt and misunderstanding, but a mission into that world to serve and heal it, to proclaim to it the Good News of salvation, and to bring to it that same love with which Jesus has loved us.

**************************************************************************************

Miranda (& Erich) Weingartner

Justiceagenda@hotmail.com

 

EASTER

Russian Easter


"Is it permitted?" inquire our two Moscow guests
on a Long Beach bench
as sacred emblems pass our way
"We are not members
of your church."

"Yes," I whisper,
"all are Christians
and believers here."

Then we three as one
with tear-stained smiles
and Slavic souls communing
thus took the broken loaf
and through the Ancient date
the Mystery rose to fuse
the Awful Fission.

Eugene Kovalenko
Long Beach
30 Apr 89

*********************************************

From Rev. Donna Schaper:

 

 

For some kinds of Christians,

 Easter is the end of personal gridlock,

when we find the door out of the grave cave,

the caged Calypso in our feet,

                         the fearful fatigue that tomorrow will be a lot like today.

 

It is the April of children street dancing,

 in their singing swinging bodies,

 not able to remember there was an earthquake yesterday.

 

It is the place beyond the frenzy of fear,

 even the cold possibility that betrayal may repeat itself.

 

At Easter our wandering is over, our hunger is fed, death lacks its usual dominion.

 

The imprisoned spirit breaks exile.

 

Alleluias spill out of our eyes, blessing the earth with tears of rain, joying the buds into blossoms.

 

Jesus dies, Jesus lives,

Jesus lives to live and die again,

and we see our own passions and our thresholds in his evening sitting at Resurrection’s Window Sill.

 

With Thanks to Thom Wolfe’s Ýou Can’t Go Home Again.

  *****************************************************************

 

Easter and Resurrection    Two very different approaches to the Resurrection of Jesus at Easter time. Christian theologian Walter Wink describes how Christians experience Jesus as alive. Jesuit thinker Joseph McCloskey speaks of the Resurrection as God's personal response to who we are.

Easter: What Happened to Jesus?

by Walter Wink

CONSIDERING THE WEIGHT THE EARLY CHURCH ATTACHED TO THE resurrection, it is curious that, subsequent to the empty-tomb stories, no two resurrection accounts in the four Gospels are alike. All of these narratives seem to be very late additions to the tradition. They answer a host of questions raised by the gospel of the resurrection. At the core of all these accounts is the simple testimony: we experienced Jesus as alive.

A later generation that did not witness a living Jesus needed more; for them the resurrection narratives answered that need. But what had those early disciples experienced? What does it mean to say that they experienced Jesus alive? The resurrection appearances did not, after all, take place in the temple before thousands of worshipers, but in the privacy of homes or cemeteries. They did not occur before religious authorities, but to the disciples hiding from those authorities. The resurrection was not a worldwide historic event that could have been filmed, but a privileged revelation reserved for the few.

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Nevertheless, something "objective" did happen to God, to Jesus, and to the disciples. What happened was every bit as real as any other event, only it was not historically observable. It was an event in the history of the psyche. The ascension was the entry of Jesus into the archetypal realm. Though skeptics might interpret what the disciples experienced as a mass hallucination, the experience itself cannot be denied.

This is what may have happened: the very image of God was altered by the sheer force of Jesus being. God would never be the same. Jesus had indelibly imprinted the divine; God had everlastingly entered the human. In Jesus, God took on humanity, furthering the evolution revealed in Ezekiel's vision of Yahweh on the throne in "the likeness, as it were, of a human form" (Ezek. 1:26). Jesus, it seemed to his followers, had infiltrated the Godhead.

The ascension marks, on the divine side, the entry of Jesus into the son-of-the-man archetype; from then on Jesus' followers would experience God through the filter of Jesus. Incarnation means that not only is Jesus like God, but that God is now like Jesus. It is a prejudice of modern thought that events happen only in the outer world. What Christians regard as the most significant event in human history happened, according to the Gospels, in the psychic realm, and it altered external history irrevocably. Ascension was an "objective" event, if you will, but it took place in the imaginal realm, at the substratum of human existence, where the most fundamental changes in consciousness take place.

Something also happened to the disciples. They experienced the most essential aspect of Jesus as remaining with them after his death. They had seen him heal, preach, and cast out demons, but had localized these powers in him. Though the powers had always been in them as well, while Jesus was alive they tended to project these latent, God-given powers onto him. They had only known those powers in him. So it was natural, after his resurrection, to interpret the unleashing of those powers in themselves, as if Jesus himself had taken residence in their hearts. And it was true: the God at the center of their beings was now indistinguishable from the Jesus who had entered the Godhead. Jesus, in many of the post-Easter son-of-the-man sayings, seems to speak of the Human Being (the "son of man") as other than himself. Was Jesus stepping aside, as he seems to do in the Gospels, to let the Human Being become the inner entelechy (the regulating and directing force) of their souls?

The disciples also saw that the spirit that had worked within Jesus continued to work in and through them. In their preaching they extended his critique of domination. They continued his life by advancing his mission. They persisted in proclaiming the domination-free order of God inaugurated by Jesus.

The ascension was a "fact" on the imaginal plane, not just an assertion of faith. It irreversibly altered the nature of the disciples' consciousness. They would never again be able to think of God apart from Jesus. They sensed themselves accompanied by Jesus (Luke 24:13-35). They found in themselves a New Being that they had hitherto only experienced in Jesus. They knew themselves endowed with a spirit-power they had known only occasionally, such as when Jesus had sent them out to perform healings (Mark:7-13). In their struggles with the powers that be, they knew that whatever their doubts, losses, or sufferings, the final victory was God's, because Jesus had conquered death and the fear of death and led them out of captivity.

Jesus the man, the sage, the itinerant teacher, the prophet, even the lowly Human Being, while unique and profound, was not able to turn the world upside down. His attempt to do so was a decided failure. Rather, it was his ascension, his metamorphosis into the archetype of humanness that did so for his disciples. The Human Being constituted a remaking of the values that had undergirded the domination system for some 3,000 years before Jesus. The critique of domination continued to build on the Exodus and the prophets of Israel, to be sure. But Jesus' ascension to the right hand of the Power of God was a supernova in the archetypal sky. As the image of the truly Human One, Jesus became an exemplar of the utmost possibilities for living.

Could the son-of-the-man material have been lore that grew up to induce visions of the Human Being? Could it have been a way to activate altered states of consciousness based on meditation on the ascended Human Being enthroned upon the heart? It was not enough simply to know about the mystical path. One needed to take it.

The ascension was real. Something happened to God, to Jesus, and to the disciples. I am not suggesting that the ascension is nonhistorical, but rather that the historical is the wrong category for understanding ascension. The ascension is not a historical fact to be believed, but an imaginal experience to be undergone. It is not at datum of public record, but divine transformative power overcoming the powers of death. The religious task for us today is not to cling to dogma but to seek a personal experience of the living God in whatever mode is meaningful.

Walter Wink is professor emeritus of Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City and author of 16 books. He is best known for his trilogy on "The Powers" and his fascinating interpretation of Jesus' teachings on nonviolence.

 

The Spiritual Meaning of the Resurrection by Joseph McCloskey, S.J.

Resurrection is God's personal response to who we are. The heart of
Jesus pierced on Calvary blankets us with the blood of salvation. The
warmth of Christ's love touches the loose ends of our lives. Christ has
died for us and we want to be with him forever. Resurrection is much
more than a destiny; it is the fulfillment of love. Christ's love of the
Father, even to death on the cross, promises a stake in heaven when we
own Christ's death. The Cross and Resurrection of Christ are our
salvation and our foothold in heaven.

ENERGIZER

Resurrection ought to be an integral part of us. Resurrection implies
many simple statements of our faith. God is in our world! He loved us so
much that he sent his only Son to redeem us! God let His only Son die
ignominiously on a cross! Resurrection should not be something we are
vaguely waiting for after we die. The destiny to be with God forever is
part of who we are now in God's love. Christianity is living the death
and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our love of God needs the resurrection
as an energizer. Christianity without the resurrection is a mockery of
God's love. God wants us with him. Wanting to be with God is the force
of the Resurrection touching our lives now. People without hope have the
resurrection as a missing link in their lives. A continual growth of
resurrection's meaning in our lives gives us a firmer foothold on
heaven.  Christ's death calls us to our own resurrections. The
difference resurrection makes in our lives defines the final meaning of
life. Knowing what awaits us in the resurrection surpasses our powers of
imagination. The ?infinite ocean of mercy? of the Sacred Heart
resolves doubts about personal resurrection. On the day we die all
question marks will be removed by Christ's loving heart. The mystery
will be over, and we will know how worthwhile it was to respond to that
love.

VICTORY ALREADY WON

The Resurrection involves us personally with Christ. He claims our
hearts when we look up at his cross. Seeing Mary and the young John
standing close by, we can feel a part of that scene. Christ says to his
Mother: "...Behold your Son!"(John 19:26) Christ is really speaking to
us when he says to John: "Behold your mother!" Christ dying on the cross
tells each of us his mother Mary is to be our mother and we are to
belong to her in a special way. Our hearts expand on the journey to
Calvary with even a glimpse of what happened. The resurrection brings
victory to the death on the hill of Calvary. Our Eucharistic acclamation
of faith, "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again,"
proclaims our hearts HOPE in the victory already won.

NOW JOURNEY

The resurrection had its beginning on the hill of Calvary. Going from
the Christ on the cross to the Christ of the resurrection encompasses
our lifetime. We envision this Christ of the resurrection at the end of
our lives as someone we are going to meet, see and touch. If the
resurrection is going to motivate our lives, then our hope of the
resurrection should be expressed every day of our lives. The
significance of saying "yes" to living the resurrection does not
automatically change our lives. Our "yes" to now changes our lives. Now
always touches eternity.

FULLY ALIVE

The Resurrection gives rise to a consideration of heaven. To live fully
demands having a meaning to our lives beyond the present moment. Trauma
in our lives blocks the memory of a hurt and keeps us from facing what
resembles the bad experience. Unable to move toward something
pain-filled in our lives, we fine in resurrection a motive for looking
at even hard things in our lives. We get hints for the meaning of our
pain in the historical life of Christ whose heart, opened on the cross,
tells us something about ourselves. People search for the meaning of
their lives in many different ways. Faith, searching for deeper faith,
begins with an answer and becomes meaningful in the Risen Christ.
Christ's love calls us to an even deeper understanding of self, based on
the realization that in Christ we have a foothold in heaven NOW. The
resurrection helps us face life's difficulties. The Resurrection brings
something beautiful to the pain, poverty, and displacement which wrack
the human frame. Marx called religion the opium of the poor. Our opium
should be the resurrection. Graces received from the resurrection lift
us up to confront life's problems with confidence and excitement.

COMPLETION


Christ was filled with joy when he returned to his Apostles with the
gift of his peace. Touched by Christ's resurrection his joy becomes our
joy. Resistance to the resurrection comes from fear of death. The
resurrection, source of hope in its promise of new life, offers the
treasure for living well. The resurrection of Christ allows us to hope
for what we missed during life. Christ came that we might all have a
share in his life. We would like to have him around us all the time.
Even as Christ came back to his disciples and friends, the resurrection
promises us the chance to return to those with whom we would like to
have stayed. The resurrection will be the opportunity to finish
everything we have left undone. Love has a need to give the best of
everything to the beloved. The problem with responding to Christ's gift
is our love often fails to meet the standard of the all given on the
cross. The resurrection is the unfinished being finished and the
incomplete being completed. All the love we have had for our friends on
earth attains its ultimate meaning in Christ. The fullness of our union
with Christ opens our hearts to all that was missing in our friendships.
The resurrection is the completion of all in Christ. Love, begun in
time, needs the promise of the forever of Christ's resurrection.

RESTLESSNESS

Resurrection is the goal reached. Until then our souls are constantly
restless. We can perhaps kid ourselves that we have found what we have
been searching for all of our lives. The fact is, that even when we
think we possess the most joy and excitement of life we have ever had,
we are already looking for something more. As soon as something starts
to repeat itself and we know we have the wherewithal to handle the
problem with which we are dealing, the restlessness begins. It is hardly
noticed at first because there is the hustle and bustle of things to be
done to get caught up and stay current. Eventually we have gone as far
as we can go. Horizons, where we could go on forever, are barely touched
before we are pulled off in other directions. We stake out a territory
and try to claim a meaning to our lives which has to do with the job we
are doing. In truth, the territory now has other bosses and the job gets
done whether we are there or not. We grow in the realization that the
job was not the meaning of our lives. We discover, in our relationship
to Jesus Christ the true meaning of our lives. He is the goal for which
we are made. In him we can find all that is missing. Our foothold in
heaven is the destiny of each of us, and in finding Christ we will have
the truth of ourselves even as we accept his peace and can rest IN HIM
contented FOREVER.

FAMILY NAME

Joy and peace abound when the goal of reaching Christ is attained. It
is Christ who will bring us to the Father. It is Christ who, by dying
for us, will give us belonging. We can imagine Christ's joy as he says
to his Mother and his disciples: ?I am his son.? What is now humanly
known to him by hearing his Father call HIS name, is ALSO knowable by
us. The Father is his Father, and the Father is our Father. Baptism puts
Christ in Our Souls. The flowering of baptism is our dying by which we
are called to eternal life. The resurrection is the rite of coming of
age in heaven. Acceptance is then for us in his name. The statement of
the goal reached is made in hearing ourselves called by his name. We
recognize that name, and the way that it is said gives us cause to
believe that we really do belong; we really are part of his family. All
of our lives we strive to be accepted for ourselves, and suddenly we
know that acceptance is in being called by the "family" name.

REALLY CHRIST

We are called by his name because we are meant to be other Christs.
Baptism gave us not only his life, but also the right to his presence in
our life. Christ becomes the source of the resurrectional grace in our
hearts. That which we have no right to expect happens; the Father is our
Father. The Parable of the Prodigal Son says it so simply; the return of
the sinner to the family makes our Father happy. Our life in the
resurrection makes a difference to God. We do not have to wait for
heaven to enjoy his life. There is nothing unimportant in our lives.
Real freedom is doing what Christ has revealed as love for the Father.
The Commandments themselves are the truth of our belonging to God. How
much we love Christ is seen in our living the Commandments. What we
could have spent years figuring out for ourselves has been revealed to
us from the earliest years of our lives in the commandments of God. God
has revealed the secret of happiness in the comanments.
FACT OR FICTION

The resurrection is the greatest of all the gifts which has been given
to us by God or it is an outrage and a magnificent deceit foisted on the
human race. Are we willing to say that the resurrection is our life's
greatest dream? Are we willing to say that because of the resurrection
we are willing to promise ourselves never to commit a mortal sin, never
even to commit a venial sin, or even to walk into an ambiguous
situation? Are we willing to be at a point in our lives where every
person we have ever known suddenly becomes one person in the Christ of
the resurrection? If we can convince ourselves Christ is in everyone,
then every person in our lives will begin to make sense in the
resurrection of Jesus Christ. We will be able to take up the need, the
hurt, and the pain of everyone who comes into our lives. If we do not
see the resurrection as making a difference, here and now, then we have
to face up to the fact that we have been conned, taken for a ride, made
a part of the greatest hoax in history.

THE PROMISE

How do we know if the resurrection makes a difference? The answer is so
simple. Look at the altar of sacrifice. The bread and wine offered on
that altar signify Christ's promise of everlasting life to those who eat
his body and drink his blood. We come before the Eucharistic table
asking for this moment be really present to the life, death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Eucharist is the celebration of the
Last Supper and the death of Jesus. The resurrection can not be left out
of this celebration. The resurrection mystery is part of an equation
which is death plus resurrection equals the victory of Christ. Christ,
who is in heaven is in the Eucharistic mystery now a reality here on
earth! Eucharist by touching the resurrection gives all of us access to
our foothold in heaven. When a priest holds up the bread and says: "This
is my body," he has entered into the power of the resurrection. It is
the event of two thousand years ago. By those words the priest has
committed his life and the lives of those who celebrate with him to
Eucharist. All have been joined together in the power of Christ's
promise of eternal life. Past, present, and future meet. The expression
of faith: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again,
becomes an alive moment! Christ is not only present in Eucharist, but
the gift of every heart now comes together with Christ's resurrectional
friendship. We allow our lives, in varying degrees, to be absorbed into
the power of the resurrection. We allow our lives and the sacrifice we
offer to make a difference. We say "yes" to living the resurrection. We
respond by freely offering up to the Lord all that we do. The
resurrectional grace which makes this possible is found in Eucharistic
faith and in the sharing of the Eucharistic Meal.

CHRIST TODAY IN US

How does the resurrection meet with the nitty-gritty of every day life?
How can we take up our cross and follow Christ if he died two thousand
years ago? The death is over! Christ has the glory of the resurrection!
How does this most sacred, solemn and touching moment here on earth
become the same sacrifice? The mystery is more than we can ever fully
appreciate. The Resurrectional Church celebrates the Resurrectional
Christ. Christ who embraces us with his life of resurrection lives that
same sacrifice in us. Our suffering belongs to this mystery, belongs to
the resurrection of Christ. It is much more of a real sacrifice to us
than we could ever have imagined because it is our sacrifice. Our joy at
filling up what is wanting to the suffering of Christ's body, his
church, - makes Christ's sacrifice real in our lives today. In Christ,
our sacrifice becomes his Resurrectional sacrifice. His once and for all
death of two thousand years ago becomes, in us, the same sacrifice. We
fill up what is wanting to the Body of Christ by what we do for his
church.

CENTERPIECE OF CHRISTIANITY

Every widow, every separated or divorced person, everyone who is
lonely, old, hurt, weak and broken - for whatever reason, whatever
outrage - live in the power of the cross of Christ by the hope of the
resurrection. If we break off the resurrection from the cross of Christ
in our lives, suffering obviously makes no sense. If we are living our
lives in such a way that we do not honestly see in the resurrection of
Christ some sense to what we are suffering in our daily lives, our pain
of not being able to live up to responsibilities of family or friends,
or whatever, has no meaning. Then Christianity is a mockery of what
God's love and mercy is all about. What we have to understand is that
the Sacrifice of Christ is the centerpiece of all Christianity. All of
the other Sacraments look toward what is done at the Eucharistic table
where the fullest expression of the Mystery of the Resurrection takes
place. Christ in our Eucharistic celebration claims all of our crosses
for the glory of our resurrection.

RECOGNITION OF CHRIST

Love means doing what is best for another. It challenges us to live up
to what is good and noble. It means living up to the Christ
relationship. Thus the gift is given of being one's self in Christ. We
have to reach an intense awareness of the Christ in our own hearts so
that we can honestly say to anyone we meet; ?My Christ recognizes your
Christ!? If we affirm that Christ, we empower each other to step forth
into the world in the name of Christ. If we do not have honor and
reverence for the Christ of another's heart, we do not truly love. The
recognition of Christ is the greatest gift we can give to anyone. The
power of the resurrection is expressed by the definition of Church which
calls it ?the People of God.? The beauty of the Church is that the
Resurrectional Church is truly the People of God! It is our
responsibility to do something about anything that upsets the rights or
needs of the poor. We will be judged before God on whether we did
something about the needs of the people around us. Christ lives in the
hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the infirm, and the incarcerated. Christ
identifies with all the needy. Anger is holy when it gives the energy to
be involved in the search for solutions to pain. Because we are the
Church as the People of God, it is our responsibility to live the power
of Christ's love. Our zeal for the poor expresses the power of the
resurrection to all those around us. Our hope to make a difference makes
hope a grace of the Resurrection. Christ is seen in what we try to do in
his name for the poor.

THE LIVING CHRIST

The resurrection needs to be a lived experience with others. Because
the resurrection belongs to the People of God, it is the shared
experience which Paul captured in his realization that the Church is the
Body of Christ. The special grace of being alive today is that we have
come a long way from the Mystical Body statement of Pius XII. We see the
Church as made up of the People of God. That brings us to the awareness
of the resurrectional grace which is contained in Matthew 25, 40:
"...insofar as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of
mine, you did it to me!" The meaning of our service to the least one of
our brothers and sisters is that Christ lives in the poor we serve.
Christ is in all of the suffering men and women of the world.  "Why are
you persecuting me?" (Acts 9:4) of Christ to Paul strikes fear into any
serious minded Christian. Christ told his disciples at the Last Supper
that if they were his followers they would be persecuted even as he was.
He never told us to criticize one another. If something is of God, and
has in it the life of the resurrection, it will survive no matter what
the enemies of Christ have to say about it. The seed of martyrs is the
seed of Christianity, where the life-blood of resurrection is passed on
to us. It would be terrible to discover in the resurrection we had been
against Christ. The good which people do belongs to Christ. That is why
scandal, even when it is the truth about someone, and especially
calumny, a lie about someone, are wrong. Champions of truth, once too
many times, can be the persecutors of Christ in their brothers and
sisters.

DRAWING POWER OF CHRIST

In the power of the resurrection, God becomes a friend. We have reason
to be comfortable with him and with each other. The only difficulty in
living the resurrection, in making it our way of life, will be in
letting God take care of everything. We can never fully fathom in a
moment of time the mystery of the resurrection. Images can tell us how
much a difference the resurrection makes. It might be compared to an
overloading of circuits with the energy of life. It is an expression of
love where the human is held together by the divine. The Father's love
brings Christ back to heaven. In us the resurrectional grace is our
humanness meeting a divine destiny. Christ's joy draws us toward
perfection. Just as perfect love generates a return, creation and birth
come back to the Father in our resurrections when death puts periods on
a life in time. Death and resurrection become the nativity of a life in
eternity.

CHIPS OF THE CROSS

Any moment in the life of Christ, the eternal Word of the Father, would
have been enough for our salvation. Christ went the extra mile to the
cross. Our extra mile can be found in the claim Christ has on our hearts
to go beyond the status quo. That we could want our Christ of the
resurrection to wipe out our enemies is the all too human experience of
anger. That we are called by the grace of the resurrection to announce
the forgiveness of Christ means that we have a reason for being willing
to accept our crosses. The lived experience of the resurrection does not
keep us out of trouble. In truth, it gets us into trouble because our
love takes us to where Christ is hurting. Christ is in the little ones
of the world. What we do for them, Christ takes as done for himself. We
may one day enjoy the excitement of our relationship to Christ in our
sufferings which can be like chips off the block of Christ's cross.
Christ came for, the forgiveness of sins. We can be his forgiveness. The
offering up of our chips for the sins of the world around us brings the
Lord's forgiveness to our world. Our sufferings can touch our brothers
and sisters as the forgiveness of the Resurrection.

ACCESS TO HEAVEN

Anything can be a signal of Christ's presence. Sometimes his presence
is too well hidden, disguised by the sinfulness of life. We need
Christ's help to break the code. Christ's hidden life, our awareness of
the importance of any moment, and our love for the cross of Christ, can
lead us toward the resurrection as a meaningful destiny in our lives.
Awareness of Christ in our daily lives contributes to the Resurrectional
Grace. This grace is the sum of the Christ experience in a person. The
excitement of the resurrection pushes the choice of God forever in
heaven. The hope for the resurrection is found in life. In the intensity
of a passionate love affair with Christ, the desire to be possessed by
Christ grows. Christ, our foothold in heaven, is our access to the
Father.

A FATHER?S LOVE

The resurrection, an embarrassment of riches, HAS A LIFE OF ITS OWN!
Just as it only takes a moment to love for a lifetime, the resurrection
is the Eternal Moment of a lifetime to express love. The lived
experience of Christ in our own lives makes each one of us a Child of
God. We have no right to expect love, but we can receive it. The very
mystery of creation includes the world which is always praising God just
by being what it was meant to be - it could not be anything else. Yet,
the love of God is such a mighty force that it goes out from him as a
force of life which is the creation mystery. A true human relationship
leaves us with our freedom. Perfect love generates a return. Any
incomplete act in the human race has the need of fulfillment. Christ, by
his death and resurrection, came to claim us for the Father. To say we
are adopted children says a great deal, but it does not say enough,
because, in the death of Christ for our sins, we become the recipients
of the very love that the Father has for Jesus Christ.

CLAIMED BY GOD

Thus, we love God, and God, because we are living as children in his
house, fills us with the power of the resurrection. This power enables
us to give away our lives in the name of the love of Christ. The journey
of life ends in the discovery of what makes our lives his life. In
Christ, two natures are found in one person. What we would never have
been able to understand about the nature of God (which is so much
mystery that it needs all of eternity to be said) is said in the human
nature of Christ in such a way that GOD MYSTERY IS HUMAN MYSTERY! The
human life of Christ is the perfect statement of the mystery of the
mercy and love of God. Humanity has been claimed by God, in Christ. We
can claim, by asking Christ to die for us, the flowering of that
relationship in our lives. We do not have to wait in line for God. We
can look within, through the power of the resurrection, to find the joy
that is the sign of God's presence in our lives. God is so much a lover
that he has been waiting all this time for us to want him. If there were
a hot-line, it would be in our hearts, as God waits for us to really
call out for him. Then, he could come as the Lover rather than the
Master.

THE SUN OF GOD

Resurrection speaks to our hearts. We need to love so much that we are
totally lost in our beloved. Some do not like Paul because he was so
"turned on" by Christ. He could make us feel like part-time Christians
in comparison. Paul grows on us as we grow in Christ as the one love of
our hearts. What you look at, you become. We find ways of looking at
Christ in our lives, and we find that he was there even when we were not
looking. Paul no longer seems so far out or out of reach in the way that
he loved Christ and spoke about him. The truth of the resurrection grace
is that the Son of God is like the morning sun. As Christ comes up in
our lives, the darkness is pushed away. With the rising of the Son of
God in our hearts in the power of the resurrection, we find him in so
many more ways in our lives in the hundredfold that come to us for
following him. The Resurrection makes us be treated all too well in his
Name.The resurrection can be an attracting force that focuses our hearts
on God. We go from a world divided to one where all hearts are one.
There is no longer anything that is unimportant. We do not miss a thing.
We have arrived where perfect giving and perfect receiving meet in the
beauty of how much the Father loves the Son and, through him, us. We are
truly the Communion of Saints, united through the resurrection in each
other's Christ. The Son of God shines brightly.


FREE CHOICE

Sometimes, we might feel like hitchhikers on the road of life. We are
going along with our thumbs out, waiting for someone who is on the way
to the Resurrection to stop and pick us up, take us along. If anything
is certain, at this moment of life, it is that we have to be willing to
get out there and drive our own cars to the Resurrection. We have to be
willing to get out of the traffic jams where we hide in the confusion of
what other people are doing, and get out there in front, willing to be
counted as one of those who belong to Christ. Love of the cross is a
sign and symbol of a genuine contemplative. It reflects our love of
Christ. The Resurrection is the sign and symbol of love expressed and
has an excitement for life whose meaning is belonging to Trinity where
all mysteries of life come to an end in God's life shared forever. God
is now understandable in Christ having been human; even as Christ the
human becomes the CHOICE of our belonging to God.

OUR BELIEF

The Resurrection can make a difference to us. When we have located one
reason for personal joy in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we have
found the uniqueness of our relationship to Christ. Then we have a
reason to love him so much we are willing to die for him. He already HAS
SHED HIS BLOOD which has passed into the soil of life. Our shedding our
blood brings a flowering of souls. Wet become part of Christ's Eucharist
by being his disciples in the carrying of our crosses for him to bring
his peace to our world. In the light of the Resurrection, we believe:

-        that Christ is our 'foothold' in heaven
-        that suffering and resurrection cannot be 'hyphenated; they must
be 'crossed'.
-        that if we face the cross without the Resurrection, Christianity
is a scandal and an outrage.
-        that the Resurrection, as our, hope, is in the person Christ.
-        that the world which was groaning for salvation has it in the
suffering, death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
-        that JOY is the infallible sign of the Resurrection.
-        that the resurrection is the fullness of the joy of life.
-        that if we treat someone as they can be with God's love, we call
forth the Resurrection of Christ in that person.
-        that if we look toward the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, we
become what we see.
-        that the Resurrection is lived by claiming it.
-        that the Resurrection is the fullness of life.
-        that eye has not seen and ear has not heard what awaits us in
the fullness of what Christ has won for us in his passion, death and
resurrection.

PRAYER  


Heavenly Father, you have sent your Son into our lives so we may be
touched with something of Divinity; that our hearts might be converted
to belong entirely to you; that we might know ourselves as special and
we possess within our hearts the power to carry us through every cross
to the Resurrection.

Help us to understand this Mystery. Send your Spirit upon us so that
filled with the love you gave the world by his second birth into heaven,
we might know the meaning of life in his Resurrection and claim its
meaning even now for our life here. Let the Resurrection really make a
difference in our lives. Allow us to be integrated into the mystery of
what we can be in the power and the glory of Christ's Resurrection.

Open us to the love that is claiming us as citizens of heaven in the
joys of Christ that are such a rich taste of what is coming. Mold us in
the power of this hope that is ours in Christ. Let him tell us again and
again how to be so totally your children we would never choose a passing
pleasure of this world before the joy of always being yours.Allow us to
be more united to your love each day. May our minds, hearts, and
feelings bring us closer and closer to you.
We would realize even now the joy of belonging totally to you so that
all we would choose would be chosen in the love we have for you in your
Son Jesus Christ. Let him be our foothold on heaven and our holiness now
and forever. Let our stony hearts be taken away. Give us Christ's heart
so we may all be of one mind and heart destined for his resurrection and
your love forever and ever. This we ask with all our hearts in his
Sacred Heart. Amen.

 ********************************

Preparing for Easter

Come to the Table: A Catholic Passover Seder for Holy Week invites 
Christians to appreciate more fully the Last Seder, where Jesus 
established the Eucharist as a sacrament. Developed for family and 
church use, includes: details with citations to Hebrew and Christian 
scripture; commentary about historical tensions between Christians 
and Jews, and conditions for reconciliation; meaning of Passover 
symbols and significance relative to the sacraments; traditional 
seder service adapted for home and parish use; English 
transliteration of Hebrew prayers; instructions for conducting the 
seder;  and guidelines for table and food preparation.

www.amazon.com/Come-Table-Catholic-Passover-Seder/dp/0976396203/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269272234&sr=1-4

 

When I was a child, my family celebrated Christian holidays in a fairly standard secular way, decorating a tree on Christmas and hunting eggs on Easter, not to mention joining in the customary consumption of marshmallow peeps, “jelly bird eggs” (whatever those are), and other foods invented by companies with a clever eye for turning a profit from a holiday.

My version of Easter lacks the radical Christian religiosity that Nichola laid out in her recent post about Good Friday as a time “to look at the crucifixions necessary to preserve the fiction of Pax Americana, or any false peace maintained by force, whether violent or hegemonic.” It lacks the progressive rethinking of the resurrection narrative that Rabbi Lerner highlighted in his spiritual wisdom of the week post with a quotation from Peter Rollins. But it’s still one of my favorite holidays of the year.

On its surface, the humanist Easter I grew up with may have seemed drained of meaning to religious onlookers, but it was actually highly ritualized and deep in its own way. I want to share my family’s three main rituals — an Easter eve afternoon of collaborative egg art, the collective reading aloud of a surprisingly feminist bunny book from the 1930s, and a morning of romping, outdoor egg hunts in bitter spring weather — as a resource for nonreligious families who want to celebrate a secular Easter that’s about more than just candy.

An Afternoon of Egg Art

There’s something deeply nourishing about spending hours making art in a group. The air becomes quiet, contemplative, and open. The contemplative air that settles over a group of people making art invites earnest, emotionally grounded communication. It creates a non-awkward silence — something hard to come by in our society. Creating art on something as fragile as an egg requires total concentration. One slip of the hand can (and does) smash half an hour’s work, so creating art on eggs can also offer practice in letting go. As a small child I dyed eggs by dipping them in edible dyes and using rubber-band-resist techniques. I’ve continued to keep up this tradition as an adult. Here are some eggs I dyed with friends in 2007:

In middle school I began experimenting with Ukrainian egg dyeing techniques, which involves melting beeswax over a candle, drawing patterns on eggs, and then dipping them into successive baths of brilliant (but somewhat toxic and non-edible) dyes. My friends and I spent hours dyeing the eggs and then holding them up to a candle flame afterward to melt off the wax and reveal the bright patterns.

A few years ago, my partner taught me yet another egg-dyeing technique involving drizzles of rubber cement and Ukrainian egg dyes. That’s how we spent yesterday afternoon (the picture at the top of the post is of the eggs we made). Here’s a process picture:

A Surprisingly Feminist Bunny Book

The most central Easter tradition throughout my childhood was the ritualized reading aloud of “The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes” a children’s book written in 1939 by Du Bose Heyward (who I just realized is also the author of the novel “Porgy” on which Gershwin’s opera was based) and illustrated by Marjorie Flack.

Just as “Porgy” has its heart in the right place but is far from a shining exemplar of anti-racist literature, “The Country Bunny” has a nice grrl-power punch but is by no means the best example of feminist literature around these days. However, I still love this book deeply and think it’s pretty progressive, more than seventy years after it was written.

Here’s the short version of the story: a young, brown cottontail girl bunny with funny country clothes announces her desire someday to become one of the world’s five Easter bunnies (an exalted position with great prestige and responsibility). All of the “big white bunnies who lived in fine houses” and the big masculine Jack rabbits laugh at her and tell her to “go back to the country and eat a carrot” and leave important labor like Easter egg delivery to big men bunnies like them. In the face of their sneering prejudice, the country bunny just says “you wait and see.”

The country bunny grows up but has to put her career aspirations on hold temporarily because one day, “much to her surprise,” she has twenty-one baby bunnies. (There is no mention ever of a husband or father bunny, so it seems like she was just enjoying the pleasure of being a mature woman rabbit but did not have access to comprehensive sex ed information or contraception …)

However, as a single mother and the manager of her family farm, the country bunny eventually gains recognition from the rabbit community for her wisdom, kindness, cleverness, and swift feet, and breaks through the glass ceiling to become the first female Easter bunny. Can you see why my four-year-old feminist heart was pounding a little? The story doesn’t end there, though … you’ll have to read the book for the whole tale.

A Muddy Romp Outdoors

The last ritual of my humanist Easter involves a morning of egg hunts, hiding the eggs we dyed the day before in the roots and branches of trees, or nestled in the grass. My parents used to invite over a big group of international students for Easter dinner, so egg hunts at my house were an opportunity for all of us to reach past our linguistic and cultural barriers and have some good fun outdoors. But most importantly, the egg hunts were a ritualized yearly time when we opened ourselves up to the frosty, muddy reality of early Wisconsin spring. I think Easter was often the first day that I really braved the cold long enough to notice how plants were actually starting to grow after the bitter winter. What a thrill to see the first crinkled rhubarb shoots starting to poke through the ground, or the tulips’ sharp green tips. Especially in colder climates, extended outdoor egg hunts offer an opportunity to meditate on the radical amazement of springtime, just as the earth starts to thaw.