An American tourist goes to see the famous Polish rabbi Hofetz Chaim. He enters the rabbi's house and finds him in a simple room filled with books, a table and a bench. He asks him, "Rabbi, where is your furniture?"
"And you, where is yours?" replies the rabbi.
"Mine?" asks the puzzled tourist. "But I'm only a visitor here. I'm only passing through."
And the rabbi replies, "So am I."
As we pass through another Easter season we pare down to essentials to nourish our spiritual lives. We give thanks and join in singing Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.
The Easter songs ring:
"That Easter tide with joy was bright
The sun shone out with fairer light
Alleluia"
Easter is a time of abundance. Eggs symbolize this more than anything else. New life! Springtime! We grow dizzy with the celebration of life once again.
Lent has, hopefully, retuned our ears. Lent was a time to listen. I'm going to replay three quotes Father Ron Rolheiser used in "The Rich Meaning of Christmas". I have simply substituted the word Easter for Christmas. Reflect as often as you wish on each.
The incarnation does not mean that God saves us from the pains of this life. It means that God-is-with-us. For the Christian, just as for everyone else, there will be cold, lonely seasons, seasons of sickness, seasons of frustration, and a season within which we will die. Easter does not give us a ladder to climb out of the human condition. It gives us a drill that lets us burrow into the heart of everything that is and, there, find it shimmering with divinity. Avery Dulles
Every year of life waxes and wanes. Every stage of life comes and goes. Every facet of life is born and then dies. Every good moment is doomed to become only a memory. Every perfect period of living slips through our fingers and disappears. Every hope dims and every possibility turns eventually to dry clay. Until Easter comes again. Then we are called at the deepest, most subconscious, least cognizant level to begin to live again. Easter brings us all back to the crib of life to start over again: aware of what has gone before, conscious that nothing can last, but full of hope that this time, finally, we can learn what it takes to live well, grow to full stature of soul and spirit, and get it right. Joan Chittister
After a mother has smiled for a long time at her child, the child will begin to smile back; she has awakened love in its heart, and in awakening love in its heart, she awakes also recognition. In the same way, God awakes Himself before us as love. Love radiates from God and instills the light of love in our hearts. Hans Urs Von Balthasar
Easter is the triumph of LOVE, love that lasts beyond death. HOPE accompanies love and teaches us that death is not the end. And FAITH, God's gift, points us in the right direction. Love trumps despair and keeps our light shining, like the Easter candle, for all others to see.
