Happy Easter!
“Rejoice in the Lord always! Again I say it, rejoice!”
[CLICK BELOW FOR A LINK TO THE EASTER MASS LIVE STREAM, 9:00AM]
Some food for thought: Easter is not only concerned with recalling the Resurrection of Jesus or its impact on the first Christian disciples, but also with the meaning of this event for our own lives and for our faith. The celebration of Easter (and, as we have seen, the days of Holy Week leading up to it) are a call for us to change – and perhaps change radically – as Jesus’ first disciples changed.
The sign that we are truly sharing in the risen life of Jesus is that our lives and our behavior undergo a constant development. We not only believe, we not only proclaim, but we do what we believe and we live what we proclaim.
St. Peter tells us in the Acts of the Apostles, “Christ has ordered us to proclaim this to His people and to tell them that God has appointed Jesus to judge everyone, alive or dead…that all who believe in Jesus will have their sins forgiven through His name.” There we have our mission.
Putting it in language that may be more easily understood today, St. Peter is saying that Jesus and the way of life He proposes is the yardstick by which we are to measure ourselves and not just as Christians but as human beings. To attach ourselves totally to the Way of Jesus is to bring about a deep reconciliation with God and with all our brothers and sisters. It is to bring freedom, justice, and peace into our world (starting here in North Portland) and prepare us for the day when we all become one in our loving Creator, the Father of Truth.
Join us Easter Sunday morning for the live-streaming of our Masses at 9am (English) and 12pm (Spanish).
