Monday 10 April
Easter Monday First reading - Acts 2:14,22-33 “You have made known the way of life to me, you will fill me with gladness through your presence”. This is the experience of resurrection. Knowing the way of life. The way of life which cannot be corrupted, which cannot be abandoned to Hades. The way of life which can never be conquered by the power of death. This life is made known to man in Jesus Christ. This experience is not just an epistemological experience. It is not just a knowledge. But it is a concrete reality. That is what we can read in the next sentence. “You fill me with gladness through your presence”. God filling man with gladness by His presence. The corruption of decay and death come from deprivation and separation. This is transformed. The decay and death are substituted with gladness. Gladness of fullness and integrity. This gladness comes from the presence of the Lord in me. He fills me with His presence which gives me gladness. This pure gladness is the Paschal Joy. The joy that Lord is present in us and fills us. Jesus going out of the tomb is the human nature liberated by gladness by the presence of the Lord in us. Gladness of reconciliation and forgiveness. Let’s reflect: Am I experiencing the presence of Resurrected Lord in me?
Sunday 9 April
Easter Sunday First reading - Acts 10:34,37-43 “we have eaten and drunk with him after his resurrection from the dead”. This is the resurrection experience that touches our daily life. Resurrection is not something abstract, but very concrete. It is Lord being with us and shares our table, shares our joys, and shares our sorrows. And He want that we tell everyone that in Him all the sins will be forgiven. And His authority is over both alive and dead. That is over everything that existed or exits or will exist. Through Resurrection, Jesus Christ, Son of God became man becomes the Lord of the creation. He was the Lord always but with Resurrection, He is sharing His power with us so that we can get out of our sins and our shortcomings. He is sharing with us as sharing around a table, His love, forgiving and embracing, to make us also sons and daughter of God the Father. By conquering death, He conquered the most powerful evil and liberated us from that too. In the person of Jesus Christ, the mystery of Resurrection becomes a concrete reality of everyday life and naturally the life after death too. Let’s reflect: how much I feel the Resurrection as a everyday concrete reality?
Saturday 8 April
Holy Saturday The silence of Holy Saturday is not the muteness of the Word of God but it is the eloquence of the Word of God. The silence of Holy Saturday is the reality that the incarnate Word of God takes control of your history, our history. He became an integral part of our history. He became the one who changes our history. That is Jesus Christ. The more you know about Jesus Christ, the more you are in love with him. Because He embraces each and everyone. The silence of the Word of God on Good Saturday is an example that God moves forward with His plan irrespective of our plans and He will guide us to the our right destination.
Friday 7 April
Good Friday First reading - Isaiah 52:13-53:12 “And yet ours were the sufferings he bore, ours the sorrows he carried. But we, we thought of him as someone punished, struck by God, and brought low. Yet he was pierced through for our faults, crushed for our sins”. These words of Isaiah explain Good Friday. Who died for us? How did he die? And why did he die? Jesus Christ, the Son of God, faced a violent death on the cross, for our sins. In Jesus Christ, the world sees something never told, the world witness something never heard before. Before Jesus Christ kings stand before him. In Him the power of the Lord has been revealed. He faced the violent death, a death after much pain and sufferings. The pain and sufferings due to our sins. He accepted all those sufferings and pain and in Him those sufferings and pain are transformed into forgiveness and reciprocal love. In Him the world changed. The humanity changed. In Cross Jesus carried our sorrows and bore our sufferings. In Him our human nature acquired a totally new potentiality. A potentiality to embrace God as a Father who forgives all our sins by accepting the unique sacrifice of Christ. The whole world received a heart which can be opened totally to the plan of God. The death of Jesus on the cross is the dawn of our hope, even in the darkest nights of our life.