.

Consider the range of emotions that the disciples of Jesus moved through over the days of his final suffering, crucifixion and resurrection. Such extremes of emotion cannot be imagined or pondered with disinterest. They must be experienced.

And experience is the key to understanding the Holy Week–Easter event since Christian faith is not primarily an historical religion.

Yes, Christianity did begin with a real historical event: God became human in Jesus (the Incarnation). In Jesus God lived and breathed, he walked and worked. He loved and was loved. He was hated and he suffered before being put to death as a criminal.

These were all actual historical events.

But with the Easter event in which God raises Jesus from death we are able to experience Jesus Christ as a living and present event – God-with-us, living, breathing, walking and working, giving and receiving love, and suffering and dying before being raised to the life for which he and we are created.

Jesus is for us today a real and living presence able to be experienced and verified in our own experience today.

What does this mean, to speak of Jesus as living and present, a contemporary experience?

In our own lives we have experienced death. We have also experienced life.

There are days when we feel like death and we cannot see the way ahead. Anxiety and depression threaten to overwhelm us. The nights can be long. We lie awake in interminable darkness. This feels like death and our darkness entombs us.

And then, at last, comes dawn.

Now that we are celebrating Easter the church gives us eight Easter Sundays in a row, the Octave of Easter. 

I’m happy that we have this Easter Octave since I need all the help I can get to digest the impact of the resurrection of Jesus in my life today.

So these daily FFF reflection will continue for this Easter week, concluding next Sunday.

You might like to join me in making this Easter week a form of “retreat in daily life” taking time for prayer, perhaps ten minutes two or three times each day of this week.

I know that Jesus, risen and present, will not miss the opportunity to work miracles for those who seek Him in this week.

Let us seek him together, perhaps using the FFF Prayer Wall to pray with and for each other at this link.

Image above – Tabernacle Doors,
Ria Bancroft, Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, Christchurch

AND you can listen to today’s Easter Sunday Homily Studio at this link.

Take an initiative and initiate a cafe table gathering, or join these gatherings:

Monday 1 April 2024 10.00am (& every Monday). Moku Cafe. Bush Inn Centre, Waimairi Road,  Christchurch. Trish

Thursday 11 April 2024 10.00am  Stumble Inn, 200 Mangorei Road, New Plymouth. Joan

Email me to add another: john@fff.org.nz