I scribbled down some thoughts yesterday mid-morning. I came back to them as I prayed morning prayer at sunrise.
God is so powerful. God can bring inert matter to life and can bring dead matter back to life. God will not let what has lived cease to live. What has had life will always have life, if it awakes and arises.
God is so loving. My faith tells me that God wants us so much, in life and beyond life itself, that God raised Jesus and sent the Holy Spirit to make us one person with God. With God! It is God who loves. It is God who wakes. It is God who arises. It is God who joins us together, one with God, one with one another.
In the light of God’s love, I recognize that my desire pales with God’s desire to be one person with me. If I surrender and awaken and arise with God through the power released by the risen Christ, then I will be made one, one with God, one with God’s beloved, one with others.
If you will permit me this declaration of faith: it is Christ who does the awakening and arising. I feel and know this in the deepest stillness of my soul. Christ is here, always here, to awaken me, to raise me, to join me with him, and to join me with others. Only Christ has done this; always Christ has done this.
When I surrender and love God first and say, “Not my will but yours be done,” these amazing things have happened.
More can be said. More can be written. It is enough for today. I still wish to be still, be silent, watch, pray, and let God speak, call, act, love, arise. Blessings to all who rejoice in the Easter Sunday celebrations. Many blessings to all who keep and remember the Passover feast. To all people of good will, I wish peace and all good things, with light and life renewed and everlasting and invincible.
I’m sure I mentioned before that this is my first Easter celebration outside of the United States, away from everyone I have known: family, friars, friends. Liturgically, I have kept the solemnity with the Franciscans here at Convento San Francisco and the faithful who worship at Templo San Francisco. Today, I will be spending time apart from the fraternity but not alone. In fact, I have two birthday parties to attend! This morning I make my weekly visit to Nuestra Casa, where one of the girls is celebrating her birthday today. Then I will go to the house of the Maryknoll community to celebrate Joshua’s birthday with priests and seminarians and friends. Joshua’s birthday fell on Good Friday, but you can’t really celebrate on Good Friday, can you? On the other hand, what better day to celebrate a birthday than Easter Sunday, the “birthday” of risen life? In the early evening I will talk to my parents and siblings over a video call on the Internet. It will be a good day, a joyful day, I hope. May your day be hope-filled and joyful and beautiful.
Christ is risen. Alleluia!
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