First off welcome home to the all of the
\nnew Catholics who have entered the Catholic Church this Easter! One of
\nthe parts of the Easter Vigil I always love is those in R.C.I.A.
\nentering the Church and receiving Communion for the first time.
\n I am always flooded with the emotions of my own entry into
\nthe Church and my first Communion received worthily from Fr.
\nSantos, OATH (Oblate Apostles of the Two Hearts). On my way to
\nCommunion for the first time is when I first realized that I had
\nliterally spent 40 years in the wilderness – the concept which I
\nincluded in my conversion story.<\/p>\n
One of the shifts I am still working on
\nmaking is the full realization that Easter is the greatest feast in the
\nChurch. Christmas usually gets so more more attention and is
\nmet with a greater anticipation. Part of the problem is the
\ncultural focus on Christmas with so much emphasis that it is more
\ndifficult to fully realize that reality of Easter. Even
\nthough I intellectually realize that Easter is the highest Feast and
\nknow the reasons for this, I still do not have the same anticipation
\nfor Easter as I do for Christmas. <\/p>\n
As great as the gift of the Incarnation
\nis, the gift we received of the empty tomb and our subsequent
\nredemption extends the gift of the Incarnation to our redemption. The present we received on his
\nbirthday was fully opened and revealed to us upon his death and
\nsubsequent resurrection. He left the gift wrapping of his
\nburial shroud behind him in that tomb. He is the gift that keeps on
\ngiving. Like Chesterton I joined the Church to get rid of my
\nsins. The first stage of wisdom is knowing you have sins to
\nget rid of. Possibly the second stage of wisdom is knowing
\nyou continuously have sins to get rid of and I must say I am quite
\nthankful to God for the gift of confession. The truth is that
\nhe who is wisdom himself suffered and died for us to extend the promise
\nhe made to the good thief to all of us. <\/p>\n
I think it is no surprise that the culture
\ncan so embrace Christmas and see Easter as a footnote if anything.
\n Though I am happy that there are no countdowns of shopping
\ndays till Easter and that while there is Easter commercialization it is
\ncertainly not to the same extent. The basic distillation of
\nChristmas movies is that family is important, and not necessarily that
\nthe Holy Family is important. If there were Easter movies the
\nmessage should be that repentance is important, or actually absolutely
\ncrucial. But the message that we have sins that need repenting of in
\nthe first place is of course quite frowned upon. If you feel bad about
\ndoing something it must be just guilt and the cure is to help you to
\nremove the guilt. To be more accurate the truth is that the culture
\nstill believes in sin, it is just that a quite different list has been
\ncome up with and a whole bunch of sins have been crossed off. And the
\nones that are crossed off are suppose to be absolved on the
\npsychiatrist’s couch instead. But of course the reaction to Good Friday
\nand Easter is nothing new.<\/p>\n
For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek
\nwisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to
\nJews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both
\nJews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of
\nGod. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the
\nweakness of God is stronger than men. – 1st Corinthians
\n1:22-25<\/p>\n
A stumbling block indeed as is evidenced
\nby this recent story.<\/p>\n
The pastors at this church in Raleigh,
\nNorth Carolina, were perplexed when they saw the Holy Week Sunday
\nschool lessons for preschoolers from “First Look,” the publisher of the
\none to five year-old Sunday school class materials. There wasn’t a
\nmention of the resurrection of Jesus. Naturally, the pastors inquired
\nabout the oversight. It turns out it was no oversight…<\/p>\n
“Easter is a special time in churches,” the letter from the publisher
\nsays. “It’s a time of celebration and thankfulness. But because of the
\ngraphic nature of the Easter story and the crucifixion specifically, we
\nneed to be careful as we choose what we tell preschoolers about Easter.”<\/p>\n
Mark Steyn So now the story ends with the Last Though Jesus’ death and his dying for our Alleluia, Christ is risen indeed! May you First off welcome home to the all of the new Catholics who have entered the Catholic Church this Easter! One of the parts of the Easter Vigil I always love…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2716\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.splendoroftruth.com\/curtjester\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSupper
\n– and presumably afterwards Jesus and His friends watch Elmo and then
\ngo to bed. That the foundational event of your faith is now excessively
\n“disturbing” is almost too parodic a reductio of the Wimp Christianity
\nof the mainline churches.<\/p>\n
\nsins is rather disturbing in that our sins did indeed require this.
\n That at the Agony in the Garden Jesus felt the weight of the
\nsins of the world past, present, and future and that our own sins are
\nheaped upon this weight. That his death wasn’t just
\nsatisfaction for “those worst of sinners”, but was required because of
\nthe sins of each and everyone of us. We can’t play the
\nPharisee here thanking God that we are not like others. God
\nis always thinking of us or else we would just stop existing, but I
\ncertainly realize that during this agony he was thinking of me and my
\nsins. Not exactly a thought that leads to pride.
\n But if we can’t be humbled and thankful thinking about
\nEaster, then we can’t be either humble or thankful.<\/p>\n
\nhave a blessed Eastertide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"