The Dance of Easter

A Reflection from Msgr. Peter R. Riani

Easter: the time when faith invites us to celebrate and join in the rhythm, the dance of Creation.

Death and birth, sorrow and joy, pain and pleasure, rejection and acceptance, breaking and mending, winter and summer, war and peace - all is gathered up and given meaning beyond meaning in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Jesus, like us in all save sin, who could have sinned but did not, gathers in Himself all of the yearnings of the human heart. The resurrection of the Son is the meeting place of an all-loving Father and the sisters and brothers of Jesus of Nazareth. In Him is our life and our salvation. He is the Way because he is the Truth and the Life.

In a world diseased with violence and hopelessness, the truth of the resurrection has never been more needed. It must speak to our children, surrounded as they are with forces which would rob them of their youth and innocence. It must speak to our world leaders whose idealism, if ever present, has been replaced by a cynicism which seeks to serve only personal gain and narrow political and national interests. It must speak to the deprived and oppressed so that they may not cease to demand justice and freedom. It must speak to those dedicated to violence and death of the wonder of new life and peace. It must speak to those whose lives are glutted with pleasure and possessions of the emptiness and futility of such a life.

First of all, of course, the resurrection of our Lord and Brother must speak to each of us personally. This Word is spoken to each of us in our heart of hearts. It is our own life.

It is, after all, in our ordinary day-to-day living that the rhythm of Easter continues be the heart beat of the world. The Risen Lord lives in our attitudes and thoughts, in the words we speak to each other, in the things we do and the reasons we do them.