Resurrection

 1.  PRAYER

Lord, there are areas in my life that feel dead. I carry the ache of things I may never get back. I live with regret, disappointment, and moments of hopelessness. I wish certain things had turned out differently. They didn’t unfold the way I envisioned, and it’s hard to reconcile the dreams I once held with the life I’m living now . 

But Lord, I don’t want to live in hopelessness. I don’t want lost dreams to steal the joy from my days. I want to see your hand even in hardship. I want to trust that you can rebuild what has been lost. Help me to view my struggles through the lens of Your goodness and hope.

I trust that you can bring dead things back to life. I believe that the same God who raised Jesus from the tomb can resurrect the places in my life that feel buried. I want to live with hope, with trust, and with the belief that hardship does not have the final word.

You did not create us for a life of comfort, but for a life that reflects Your goodness, even when it’s hard. I believe that You work all things together for good for those who love You. Help me to see that goodness. Give me patience when change feels slow, and restoration seems far away.

Teach me to surrender instead of control. Help me to keep bringing everything to You in prayer. And most of all, Lord, help me to live like Christ, encouraging others even as You are restoring me.

Thank You, Jesus, for loving me through the difficulty. Thank You for my salvation.

In Your precious name we pray, Amen.

2.MEDITATION 

https://youtu.be/-9KLB2HI9BI?si=NfWbGMijhIdQet

3. SONG

https://youtu.be/WaMNDpNqQ2s?si=o9KqGTx0-LA4KjWl

4. NARRATIVE

RESURRECTION: Always And Forever, the Final Word, by Richard Rohr

Posted on April 7, 2016

From Sick, and You Cared For Me

“Think of what is above, not of what is on Earth.”

Don’t you often wonder why so much of human life seems so futile, so tragic, so short, so sad?  If Christ has risen, and we speak so much of being risen with Christ, then why do most people experience their life as tragic more than triumphant?  Why is there nonstop war?  Why are there so many people unjustly imprisoned?  Why are the poor oppressed?  Why, even in Christian nations, is there a long history of deceit and injustice?  Why do so few marriages last, even among those of us who say that we believe?  Why are there so many children born with disabilities?  Why do we destroy so many of our relationships?  Why?

What are you up to, God?  Why is there so much suffering if Christ has risen?  It really doesn’t make any logical sense.  Is the Resurrection something that just happened once in Jesus’s body, but not in ours?  Or not in human history?  When and where and how is this resurrection thing really happening?  Is it only after death?  Is it only in the next world?  My guess is that it is both now and later, and just enough now to promise you an also infinite forever.

The Resurrection of Christ is telling us that in the Great Story Line of History, in the mind of God as it were, the Final Judgment has already happened, and it’s nothing that we need to be afraid of.  Instead, the arc of history is moving toward resurrection.  God’s Final Judgment is that God will have the last word, that there are no dead-ends, that our lives and human history is not going to end in a sad and tragic list of human crucifixions and natural disasters.  When we look at life in its daily moments, this is almost always hard to see.  We can only see in small frames.  Yet over and over again, here and there, more than we suspect, a kind of cosmic hope breaks through for those who are willing to see and willing to cooperate with this universal mystery of Resurrection.  I am never sure if the promise of resurrection creates an intuitive hope in us, or if people who grasp onto hope can also believe in resurrection.  All I know is that both are the work of the Holy Spirit within us.

In this part of the world, Easter coincides with Spring-time.  I hope that you’re noticing the leaves and the flowers being reborn after months of winter.  I went out this April morning to watch the sunrise which I was told would rise at 6:30 a.m.  But on the west side of the Sandia Mountain Range where I live, it takes a little longer for the sun to make an appearance.  I found myself waiting, and waiting.  But sure enough, at the very moment of 7:00 a.m., the sun again, as it always inevitably does, peeked over the mountains.

I thought, “You know, this is not so much like a sunrise as a groundswell coming from the Earth.”  It was coming from the world in which you and I live.  It was coming, not from the top, but from the bottom.  It was saying, “Even all of this which looks muddy and material, even all of this which looks so ordinary and dying will be reborn.”  Sunrises and springtime cannot be stopped, even when winter holds us with its desperate grip.  Maybe this is why ancient people almost worshiped the seasons, and why they themselves became spiritual teachers.

This is the Feast Day of Hope.  As the poet, e. e. cummings, put it, “I who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth day of life and love and wings: and of the gay great happening illimitably earth.”  Jesus is the stand-in for everybody.  He gives history a personal, a historical, and a cosmic hope.  His one life tells us where it is all heading.  He is the microcosm of the whole divine and human cosmos!

This is the feast that says God will have the last word and that whatever we crucify, whatever we tragically destroy, God will undo with his eternal love and forgiveness.  This feast affirms that God’s Final Judgment is Resurrection, that God will turn all that remains, all the destruction and hurt and punishment, into beauty.  The word on that usually blank white banner that we see the Risen Christ carrying in Christian art is simple and clear: LOVE IS STRONGER THAN DEATH!  God’s love will always win!  That’s what it means to be God.

Without such hope why would you keep living and believing when you see that everything passes on and passes away?  Everything is here and gone, here and gone, here and gone.  If you haven’t noticed that yet, just wait a while.  Everything passes.  This becomes overwhelming for most people as they get older, and it is often just denied because it is so painful.  Without such cosmic hope, we all become cynics.  Yet the Christian promise is that God will replace everything with his immeasurable and infinite life.  Jesus is the standing promise that this is the case.

What the Resurrection is saying, more than anything else, is that love is stronger than death.  Jesus walked through both life and death with love, which becomes an infinite life, a participation in God himself.  Surprise of surprises!  This cannot be proven logically or rationally, and yet this is the mystery that we now stake our life – and our death – on: nothing dies forever, and all that has died in love will be reborn in an even larger love.

So, to be a Christian, brothers and sisters, is to be inevitably and forever a person of hope.  You cannot stay in your depression.  You cannot stay in your darkness because it’s only for a time.  No feeling is final.  It will not last.  God in Christ is saying, “This is what will last – my life and my love will always and forever have the final word.”

5.  MEDITATION 

https://youtu.be/Jr0pmaF6g98?si=HtCyz8LS_OhOH44I

6.  SHARING

Theological & Theological Significance

• Why is the resurrection of Jesus so crucial to the Christian faith, and what would it mean if it didn't happen?
• What does it mean to say that Jesus is "the resurrection and the life"?
• What is the difference between immortality of the soul and a bodily resurrection?
• How does the resurrection act as a "cosmic victory" over death? 

Personal Application & Discussion

• How does the hope of the resurrection affect how you face daily challenges or fears?
• If you truly live in light of the resurrection, how should your life look different today?
• What does the resurrection teach us about the value of the physical body?
• How would you explain the significance of Easter to someone who has never heard of it? 

Reflective Questions

• Is it okay to have doubts about the resurrection? How did the disciples handle their own doubts?
• How does the resurrection show the "weight of love" or God's love? 
• 
  

7. PRAYER AND INTENTIONS 

God, I pray for those who feel stuck in a waiting season. Please remind them that even when they can't see it, You are still working. Help them to believe their story

isn't over. You are the God who brings dead things back to life. I ask that You breathe hope into the places that feel broken, empty, or forgotten. Give them the courage to trust that Sunday is coming, even when

Saturday feels long. Thank You that You are the God who meets us in the waiting, who never lets go, and who is always working for our good,

even in the waiting. In Jesus' name, Amen  

8.  SONG

https://youtu.be/xCQsK1t9EKY?si=ArUGjTpE3cd5MGzh

Holy Thursday

 

1. PRAYER

My Most Precious Lord Jesus, this night You gathered with Your Apostles to share with them Your last meal.  But this was no ordinary meal.  This was the gift of Your most Sacred Body and Blood, soon to be broken and poured out on the Cross for the salvation of the world.  

Allow me, dear Lord, to spend this night in prayer and meditation with You.  After the meal, You invited Your Apostles to join You for one hour, to stay awake and keep vigil as You prepared for Your arrest.  The Apostles fell asleep, leaving You in Your bitter agony alone.

I accept Your gentle invitation of love, dear Lord, to spend this night in vigil with You.  May I enter Your Heart as it faced the coming persecution You were to endure for my sins.  May I console Your Sacred Heart and know the love and Mercy that flowed forth.

Lord, when I face the crosses of my own life, give me Your divine courage and strength to say “Yes” to the Will of the Father.  Your love for me is abundant and is perfect in every way.  Help me to know that love, to embrace it and to allow it into my life.

I make my vigil with You this night, dear Lord.  I love You, help me to love You with all my heart.  Jesus, I trust in You.

2.  MEDITATION

https://youtu.be/y8KSid0WFwY?si=YLOq0lmV-bYMkt4Y

3.  SONG

https://youtu.be/8oRRHghUDpE?si=3IhmLabyt9EVYgxI

4.  NARRATIVE

https://www.franciscanmedia.org/franciscan-spirit-blog/lent-with-richard-rohr-unpacking-the-ritual/

As you would expect, we have three momentous readings for the day, and they are all in ritual settings. The older religions all understood the importance and power of group rituals. Without them, there is no memory, no re-creation of the founding myth for each new generation, no group cohesiveness, and no transformation of persons at the deeper levels of consciousness—and unconsciousness!

Because the message can be hardly missed in the Gospel, Jesus explicates it clearly, “As I have done, you also must do,” and then in several more repetitions (John 13:13–20). But I am going to primarily talk about the First Reading from Exodus. Here Christians might be the most ignorant. The central Passover ritual defined this people: “This shall be a memorial feast for you, which all generations shall celebrate in Yahweh’s honor as a perpetual institution” (Exodus 12:14).

“This is how you are to eat it: with your loins girt, sandals on your feet and staff in hand, you shall eat like those who are going somewhere. This is the Passover of the Lord.” —Exodus 12:11

I will only unpack the central part of the ritual, but I think your Christian imagination will take it from there. Note that it says on the tenth day of the month (“April”), they are to procure a small year-old lamb for each household. They are to keep it for four days— just enough time for the children to bond with it and for all to see its loveliness—and then “slaughter it during the evening twilight”! Then they are to take its blood and sprinkle it on the doorpost of the houses. That night they are to eat it in highly ritualized fashion, recalling their departure from Egypt and their protection by God along the way. Thank God, the Jews eventually stopped animal sacrifice, but it was meant to be a psychic shock for all as killing always is. You can see, however, that the human psyche is slowly evolving in history to identify the real problem and what it is that actually has to die.

A cultural anthropologist could explain what is happening here. The sacrificial instinct is the deep recognition that something always has to die for something bigger to be born. We started with human sacrifice (Abraham and Isaac), we moved here to animal, and we gradually get closer to what really has to be sacrificed—our own beloved ego—as protected and beloved as a little household lamb! We will all find endless disguises and excuses to avoid letting go of what really needs to be die for our own spiritual growth. And it is not other humans (firstborn sons of Egyptians), animals (lambs or goats), or even “meat on Friday” that God wants or needs. It is always our beloved passing self that has to be let go of. Jesus surely had a dozen good reasons why he should not have to die so young, so unsuccessful at that point, and the Son of God besides!

By becoming the symbolic Passover Lamb himself, plus the foot-washing servant in tonight’s Gospel, Jesus makes the movement to the human and the personal very clear and quite concrete. It is always “we,” in our youth, in our beauty, in our power and over-protectedness that must be handed over. Otherwise, we will never grow up, big enough to “eat” of the Mystery of God and Love. It really is about “passing over” to the next level of faith and life. And that never happens without some kind of “dying to the previous levels.” This is an honest day of very good ritual that gathers all the absolutely essential but often avoided messages—necessary suffering, real sharing, divine intimacy, and loving servanthood.

5.  MEDITATION

https://youtu.be/Jr0pmaF6g98?si=HtCyz8LS_OhOH44I

6.  SHARING

7. PRAYER AND INTENTIONS

Prayer of Thanksgiving for Holy Thursday

“You gave Your life to us, like the bread on the table you broke into pieces and shared.
Now anyone who holds out their hand and heart can receive it and feed.

You gave Your life to us, like the wine You poured in the cup and shared.
Now anyone who offers their lips can drink and rejoice. 

You gave us everything, O Lord Jesus,
and you offered your life like bread and wine. 
Now the entire world can taste the love of God You shared freely with all the children of the earth! 

Here we are, O Lord, holding out our hands and hearts!“

8. SONG

https://youtu.be/FmvPLDASq_w?si=RQe8HhBDfwmPji_V

Life is a box of chocolate

 

When i am down, usually a surprise springs forth to lift me up or change my perspective.  . 

Palm sunday

 

1.  PRAYER

Prayer for Humility and Praise

"Lord Jesus Christ, on this Palm Sunday, as we remember Your triumphant entry into Jerusalem, let us also remember the path that lay before You. Fill our hearts with the humility and faithfulness that You displayed. Teach us to follow Your example of selfless love, to praise You in our hearts and with our lives, as we carry our crosses daily. Hosanna in the Highest!"

2.  MEDITATION

https://youtu.be/uI0oMw-ncZo?si=vLi0o7oYuGOiMWc1

3.  SONG

https://youtu.be/mG6thyHErVc?si=wE5ehPYwRFwn1gtx

4.  NARRATIVE

Sunday, April 13, 2025

Palm Sunday

Jesus’ state was divine, yet he did not cling to equality with God, but he emptied himself. 
—Philippians 2:6–7  

Father Richard Rohr reflects on Jesus’ surrender to God through a path of descent:   

In the overflow of rich themes on Palm Sunday, I am going to direct us toward the great parabolic movement described in Philippians 2. Most New Testament scholars consider that this was originally a hymn sung in the early Christian community. To give us an honest entranceway, let me offer a life-changing quote from C. G. Jung (1875–1961):    

In the secret hour of life’s midday the parabola is reversed, death is born. The second half of life does not signify ascent, unfolding, increase, exuberance, but death, since the end is its goal. The negation of life’s fulfilment is synonymous with the refusal to accept its ending. Both mean not wanting to live, and not wanting to live is identical with not wanting to die. Waxing and waning make one curve. [1]  

The hymn from Philippians artistically, honestly, yet boldly describes that “secret hour” Jung refers to, when God in Christ reversed the parabola, when the waxing became waning. It starts with the great self-emptying or kenosis that we call the incarnation and ends with the crucifixion. It brilliantly connects the two mysteries as one movement, down, down, down into the enfleshment of creation, into humanity’s depths and sadness, and into a final identification with those at the very bottom (“took the form of a slave,” Philippians 2:7). Jesus represents God’s total solidarity with, and even love of, the human situation, as if to say, “nothing human is abhorrent to me.”  

God, if Jesus is right, has chosen to descend—in almost total counterpoint with our humanity that is always trying to climb, achieve, perform, and prove itself. This hymn says that Jesus leaves the ascent to God, in God’s way, and in God’s time. Most of us understandably start the journey assuming that God is “up there,” and our job is to transcend this world to find God. We spend so much time trying to get “up there,” we miss that God’s big leap in Jesus was to come “down here.” What freedom! And it ends up better than any could have expected. “Because of this, God lifted him up” (Philippians 2:9). We call the “lifting up” resurrection or ascension. Jesus is set as the human blueprint, the oh-so-hopeful pattern of divine transformation.   

Trust the down, and God will take care of the up. This leaves humanity in solidarity with the life cycle, and also with one another, with no need to create success stories for ourselves or to create failure stories for others. Humanity in Jesus is free to be human and soulful instead of any false climbing into “Spirit.” This was supposed to change everything, and I trust it still will.   

References:   
[1] C. G. Jung, Psychological Reflections: A New Anthology of His Writings, 1905–1961, ed. Jolande Jacobi (Princeton University Press, 1970), 323.  

Adapted from Richard Rohr, Wondrous Encounters: Scripture for Lent (St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2011), 122–124.   

5.  MEDITATION

https://youtu.be/RNeLU-5yR04?si=5b-a4G5ifReYFIjt

6.  SHARING

1. What speaks to your heaty from the reading?

2. We are in the 5th week of Lent. How might you

be changed from Ash Wednesday?

7.  PRAYER

A Palm Sunday Prayer to Rejoice in Hope

Father, Palm Sunday is a reminder of the unexpected, yet fully anticipated, King of Kings. Jesus did not look like the Messiah Your people hoped for. The way He entered the Holy City of Jerusalem on that day, riding a young donkey as a significant sign of peace and fulfillment of prophecy, did not align with their expectations of a military conqueror. Much of our daily lives don’t align with our expectations, Father. So much of our lives don’t make sense. This Palm Sunday, let us embrace the unexpected entrance of our Savior, Jesus. He is Peace. Let us apply this incredible truth to our lives. Peace mattered to Jesus. He came to bring us Peace. He is peace. Father, how quickly we forget the Peace we possess in Christ! Remind us, minute by minute, as we navigate difficult days and trying times. Father, we need Peace to live life to the full, as Jesus died for us to live.

8.  SONG

https://youtu.be/HWPv-z2gfLY?si=PUSYC4jBNT_q1hWe