Where is Jesus? … But then…
Tag Archives: Easter
Resurrection: Better than normal, better than wanting God to be dead. Happy Easter.
Happy Easter!
Islam has it that Allah is too holy to love us so much as to come into this world and die for us, the Innocent for the guilty. Better, it is said, to kill Jesus by saying that Jesus didn’t die for us, you know, that He just came down from that cross, saving Himself [?], but not us, so much not us that Muslims are directed in the Qur’an to cut down any Jews or Christians wherever they find them.
Asia also has a long history of killing God and neighbor by “praying,” you know, sitting a certain way, breathing a certain way, staring at one’s belly button in a certain way (talk about self-absorbed), and emptying one’s being of any thought, no room for God or neighbor anytime any where for any reason, effectively killing ’em all. I remember some Catholic religious sisters in upstate New York offering years of courses on how to “pray,” that is, on how not to pray in all these ways, destroying the life of God in those who went to them for such “direction.”
In Europe, we hear of the errors of Russia, their extremely violent capitalism of the state over the proletariat, which they jokingly nickname “communism.” They murder everyone, by the hundreds of millions so as to prove that they murder God. And the philosophers say, “God is dead,” even as they, pretending to have made themselves God, drop into the grave.
In these USA, we go out of our way to kill the image of God in the least of the brethren, abortifacients, abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, policies that encourage cartels and kill untold numbers of people with drugs.
In Latin America, there is Pachamama, consort of the sun god, that demon idol used as the excuse to murder hundreds of millions in “sacrifice,” whereby human hearts became the main protein source for untold numbers of centuries, surely proving by such “power” that the murder of God is at hand.
When I was a seminarian attending pontifical universities in Rome it wasn’t any better being subjected to lectures on the meta-historical-resurrection of Jesus, you know, so as to say that God is dead and He stays dead, never rising, just becoming a widespread hysteria whereby we say that Jesus is dead figment of our imaginations – but Hey! – a nice figment at that. But Jesus is dead and He stays dead, they think. I’m guessing all my professors from way back in the day are today all dead.
Instead of all this, Jesus rose from the dead according to the flesh, truly rising from the dead. His glorified body, as they call it, doesn’t mean that He was any less risen from the dead according to the flesh. He even asked for a very dead fish to eat so as to prove to them that He was alive and actually with them in the flesh. Put your fingers in the nail prints, Thomas, and your hand into my side.
Jesus commanded us not to be afraid. We are not to think that Jesus is an abstraction of our imagination somewhere in outer space. Jesus repeatedly called us friends. Forget the nirvana, forget the murder of God and the murder of the members of the Body of Christ. Pray by speaking with Jesus in humble thanksgiving, plainly, as you were created to do, redeemed to do. God has made it easy for us to be one with Him. The “normal” we never knew. And better than normal. Oh happy fault that merited for us so great a Redeemer.
Jesus is risen. Jesus is truly risen. Alleluia.
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Filed under Jesus
Doubting Thomas Sunday. No right to be cynical. Mary Immaculate saw it all.
“Let’s go to die with Him!” exclaims Thomas, who clearly loved Jesus. But we are weak. That the King of kings, who raised people from the dead, worked great miracles, spoke with authority, no political correctness, would have to fulfil being the Suffering Servant caught Thomas off guard. He ran with the rest of the Apostles, Judas already going to his own place.
Doubt comes upon us when we run after mercy not founded on justice, nice stuff from God without anyone paying the price in God’s justice. It’s like Thomas and the other Apostles say, “Why does this always have to happen to me? This isn’t right? Where’s God in all of this? I’m gone!” We’re such entitled brats, all of us, without exception. “I deserve to be able to sin because, you know, yeah.” Something like that. We’re so tough. But, no. At the very first opportunity we can say that we deserve to be able to sin. I’m too weak anyway, and that has to be God’s fault, not mine. I’m sinless. I’m immaculately conceived. There is no such things as sin, and I don’t need forgiveness.”
And there’s Jesus’ Immaculate Mother, having seen all the sin of all mankind from Adam until the last man is conceived, with purity of heart and agility of soul and clarity of vision – so totally unlike us – not at all blinded to all the hell vomited out on her Son.
If anyone had the right to be cynical – and of course no one does – it would be Mary. No one has ever suffered as has she and she remained entirely faithful to the Lord Jesus, her Son, in solidarity with Him.
How dare we think we have something more to be cynical about than her. We cave. She didn’t. She’s the heroine whose example we strive to follow with the mercy won for us in justice by her Son, He standing in our place, the Innocent for the guilty. She’s the one who intercedes for us that we become members of the Body of Christ.
How dare we offend her by still thinking that we are entitled to steal our souls away from God, away from her, our mother. Cynicism is a sin against God, but it’s also a sin against Immaculate Mary.
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Filed under Guns
Adoration: very early women rush to the tomb
Some things never change. It’s all women this Easter morning, in their knees, to greet the risen Lord Jesus. But then they will tell the Apostles and the world of their joy.
Resurrexit sicut dixit! Alleluia!
Surrexit Dominus vere! Alleluia!
Happy Easter to all!
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Filed under Adoration
Dogs eating Easter Rabbits & Easter eggs: Humor lightening it up a bit
Shadow-dog, setting a good example, has most excellent over-the-top skill sets in hunting and shredding and then devouring “Easter Rabbits” with their baskets of eggs.
The Easter Rabbit comes from a time of fasting in which no meat at all was eaten during lent, not even rabbits. But now, with rabbits having had time to proliferate during Lent, they are everywhere just waiting to be devoured as part of the celebration of Easter when there is not fasting.
The Easter eggs thing comes from a time of fasting in which no eggs[!] at all were eater during lent. At Easter, there is no such fasting, and everyone would immediately hunt down all the eggs they could find, both eating them and, in their rejoicing that Lent was over because our dear Lord and God and Savior was now risen from the dead, they would decorate those eggs and give them to others, encouraging rejoicing all the more.
Dogs killing Easter Rabbits with baskets of eggs for the devouring of all and sundry. Great! Perfect card for Easter, actually. Kill that meat-rabbit! Eat those eggs!
Happy Easter!
By the way, Shadow-dog has been practicing right along to kill that rabbit and sack the eggs:
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A Coronavirus Easter Triduum Octave
The Empty Tomb! The Light is shining brightly. Here’s the Easter Fire we had…
The Light of Christ always was and is and will be shining. Christ’s love, His grace, His presence within us, a love stronger than death, bringing us from the darkness of this world to eternal life, comes from – just to say it – Jesus, who is always alive even in His momentary physical death. We see that glory of the only Begotten of the Father in the darkness of Calvary – glory unto glory of the Light from Light, a love that is proven, with wounds, with taking on our punishment of our sin, standing in our place, the Innocent for guilty, to have the right in His own justice to have mercy on us. We all look upon Him whom we have all pierced.
Because He endured to the end, dying for us, He conquered, and is is victorious. He has the right to give us the wherewithal, that grace, that friendship, that we might walk with Him in this world right unto the next, even with our justly still suffering the effects of original sin, our own personal sin, and the sin of others while we are yet in this world. We are weak and continue to be weak. But He is strong and draws us up into His strength.
Even the weakness helps us, reminding us of why we need salvation out of the total hell of this world so that we might be brought to heaven in eternity. We are so very weak that we need to be reminded. All things work together for the benefit of those who believe. We find our security in His love that is, again, stronger than any weakness, stronger than any disease, stronger than death. This brings us joy, and a peace adequate to go on because this is not just some intellectual “ideology”, but a living faith, a bond of charity with God Himself. It’s personal.
Yes, there is an empty Saint Peter’s Square and empty Saint Peter’s Basilica:
So what?! Everyone is scampering to meet Jesus in the upper room and then up in Galilee. Great. I’m running 24/7 all this time. Aren’t you? Peter and the “other Apostle” ran to see the Empty Tomb. Great. But then what…
“Let’s go fishing…”
We are so very weak.
More on that later.
Meanwhile, this is the Octave of Easter. It’s like Easter Sunday every day until next Sunday.
I, for one, am exhausted from my scampering about. I can’t speak much about all that as there are different interpretations of the law regarding quarantines. I just do what I need to do to provide the Sacraments. Clever as snakes but innocent as doves and all that. But, thanks be to God, I am joyful, and at peace. Thanks be to God.
I hope ye are all doing well. Happy Easter to ye all. Be at peace. With joy.
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Filed under Coronavirus, Jesus, Spiritual life
Resurrexit sicut dixit! Alleluia! Surrexit Dominus vere! Alleluia!
The scene at 6:00 AM at the parish, Easter morning, early.
Happy Easter to ye all.
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Filed under Jesus
Jesus: “Three days and three nights.” Reckoning the timing of Easter.
There’s always a rivalry between “East” and “West”, between the Orthodox and their reckoning of the time of Easter and lots of the Catholic crowd who follow the Jewish way of reckoning for Passover and therefore, for us, for Easter, you know, with the moon and all that.
The above moon, full as full can be, is what was rising yesterday evening, Good Friday evening. Whatever with the three days (Friday, Saturday, early Sunday), people get all confused about the three nights, because there was just Friday night and Saturday night, right? Wrong!
Don’t forget the full eclipse of the sun by the full moon during the day on Good Friday when Jesus was on the Cross, when He died on the Cross, when He was buried. Dark as night. That’s another night.
Considering that it’s all about our Lord and not rivalry, isn’t it just true that reckoning Easter as being the first Sunday after this full moon is the best way as far as calendars go to commemorate the three days and three nights of our Lord?
Some say: Ecumenism is stupid and evil. Let’s be nice in our divisions!
The answer is: Stupid is as stupid does. But in this case, it’s all about Jesus. And that, my friends is not stupid, not evil. We should be in anguish, as Saint Augustine said, until we are one with our brothers around the altar of Sacrifice.
Speaking of Augustine and us being jackasses even while it’s all about Jesus, don’t forget what he said to a particular one of us: “Asinus es, sed Christum portas” (“You are a jackass, but you carry Christ”). That should give us restless hearts.
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Filed under Ecumenism
ARISE! LET US BE GOING! 