Religious Education & Parish News
This is the first time I can ever remember that there were no Easter celebrations in Church for us to attend during Holy Week. I know different parishes will televise Easter celebrations but I thought I would share these Easter Reflections with you and your families.
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Holy Thursday
This day remembers Jesus sharing his last meal with his friends, his disciples. During this gathering, Jesus said the words which Christians down through the centuries proclaim and live: ‘This is my Body given for you.’
Let us pray
We call to mind all in our community, our world who at this moment are working to bring healing to the deeply wounded Body of Christ.
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Good Friday
Our hearts are bruised by the brutality of this day. To read about or watch a Good Friday re-enactment can even be difficult. Imagine standing on the sidelines and witnessing these actual events unfold before you. Did any of the onlookers, the disciples, Simon of Cyrene, Veronica (source Acta Sanctorum) or the Women from Jerusalem contemplate the gift that was being offered for them by Jesus?
Within this suffering, Jesus had been almost completely isolated from those he cared about. Standing at the foot of the cross was the disciple John, ‘Jesus’ mother Mary and his mother’s sister, Mary wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene.’ (John 19:25). Everyone else responded by staying away. Mary must have had feelings of helplessness at not being able to stop her son’s suffering.
Watching someone we love follow a path that can lead to hurt and suffering is very difficult. Letting go can also be painful but sometimes we have to trust that God holds us close even when we feel isolated and alone.
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Holy Saturday
This is a day or a time of waiting. Our time of self-isolation in staying at home is akin to the “Holy Saturday Time.” It is an “in-between” space as we all wait for the coronavirus to lessen its power of contagion within our communities. We all wait for healing, for a restoration of the body of humanity which we, as people of faith, honour as the body of Christ.
We wait, as did the apostles and the first disciples of Jesus, in silence. However, because we are people of hope we wait in an empowering silence. It is a silence that will generate new life. Jesus described this waiting in silence and darkness in the parable of the wheat grain falling into the ground and dying – buried so that new life can generate from it (John 12:24).
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Easter Sunday
The stone is rolled away, the tomb is opened. We are invited into this space to embrace new life. How do we do this? We do this as a Eucharistic community in an unfolding universe. We remember the words of Jesus recorded in St. Matthew’s gospel: “Where two or more are gathered in my name, in my Love, there I am in the midst of them.” (Mathew 18:20). The bringing together of diverse elements, people, ideas, values, traditions, in the breaking of bread and the sharing of wine, tasting together to the fullness of life, Jesus is present in our midst as life itself. We rise up together beyond the resistant forces around us and within us: this is the Body of Christ. “Christ has no body now but yours.”
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Final Prayer
At present we are all struggling to breathe life into our wounded, contagious world. We ask you Lord to gather all peoples, all creatures, all that exists, into a new unity which respects the interconnectedness of all of life. May we become a new earth community founded in love and built on love, as we seek your ever abiding presence. Glory to God source of all being, eternal Word, Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be. We make this prayer through Christ our Lord. Amen
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Mrs Madaschi
Religious Education Coordinator