In this Easter Season and in the joy of the Resurrection, let’s live as Easter people helping do God’s work of renewing the face of the earth in love, mercy and compassion.
Creator God, Because of your abundant love you chose to bring light and order into the formless void, to create a world of unsurpassed beauty and you saw that it was good. We ask that you continue to recreate the world with that same attentive love, to bring light into today’s ever increasing chaos and darkness where we have failed to be stewards and carers of your creation. Replenish our hearts so that we too can renew the face of the earth.
Taking refuge in the Lord, the Good Shepherd, requires us to face our own powerlessness, our limitations, and our need to follow someone if we want to experience true fulfillment in our life. Unlike literal sheep, we are aware of the risk that our Shepherd takes: a good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. With this understanding, we see what love the Father has bestowed on us! More than merely knowing the Shepherd’s voice, we know his name, the name that saves us. We agree to be sheep, God’s children, adopted, secure and loved beyond measure.
A Prayer to the Good Shepherd
Where are you pasturing your flock, O good Shepherd, who carry the whole flock on your shoulders? (For the whole of human nature is one sheep and you have lifted it onto your shoulders). Show me the place of peace, lead me to the good grass that will nourish me, call me by name so that I, your sheep, hear your voice, and by your speech give me eternal life. Answer me, you whom my soul loves.
I give you the name ‘you whom my soul loves’ because your name is above every name and above all understanding and there is no rational nature that can utter it or comprehend it. Therefore your name, by which your goodness is known, is simply the love my soul has for you. How could I not love you, when you loved me so much, even though I was black, that you laid down your life for the sheep of your flock? A greater love cannot be imagined, than exchanging your life for my salvation.
Show me then (my soul says) where you pasture your flock, so that I can find that saving pasture too, and fill myself with the food of heaven without which no-one can come to eternal life, and run to the spring and fill myself with the drink of God. You give it, as from a spring, to those who thirst – water pouring from your side cut open by the lance, water that, to whoever drinks it, is a spring of water welling up to eternal life.
If you lead me to pasture here, you will make me lie down at noon, sleeping at peace and taking my rest in light unstained by any shade. For the noon has no shade and the sun stands far above the mountain peaks. You bring your flock to lie in this light when you bring your children to rest with you in your bed. But no-one can be judged worthy of this noonday rest who is not a child of light and a child of the day. Whoever has separated himself equally from the shadows of evening and morning, from where evil begins and evil ends, at noon he will lie down and the sun of righteousness will shine on him.
Show me, then (my soul says), how I should sleep and how I should graze, and where the path is to my noonday rest. Do not let me fall away from your flock because of ignorance, and find myself one of a flock of sheep that are not yours.
Thus my soul spoke, when she was anxious about the beauty that God’s care had given her and wanted to know how she could keep this good fortune forever.
Are you a messenger of Easter joy and hope? Let’s rest in the fact that light has overcome darkness and love has conquered death. This prayer was offered by Fr. Larry Snyder, president of Catholic Charities USA, at the fourth annual White House Easter Prayer Breakfast on April 8, 2013
Good and gracious God,
Our most glorious Creator,
As we greet the signs in nature around us of Spring once again regaling us in bloom,
In the songs of returning birds and fields soon to be planted,
We give you praise for an even greater sign of new life: the resurrection of your Son,
Our Lord Jesus Christ, that we especially celebrate at this time.
The sadness and despair of his death has given way to the bright promise of immortality,
For the Resurrection is our guarantee that justice will triumph over treason, Light will overcome darkness, and love will conquer death.
As we celebrate we also dare to ask for your grace that we may live the promise given to us,
By imitating the life of Jesus in reaching out to the poor, the marginalized, the least among us,
As we strive to be neighbors to all those we meet.
We ask for your special blessings each and every day from our President, Barack Obama.
Working with him may we strive to make this great country of ours a beacon of hope And justice in a world hungry for peace and so in need of your love.
We praise you in this Easter season. Change our lives, change our hearts to be messengers of Easter joy and hope. We make our prayer through Jesus Christ, our risen Lord forever.
My prayer today is that you will not just have an experience with our Lord, but that you will have an encounter. An experience is a meeting or a moment when something happens, but an encounter is when
something unexpectedly new happens.
Do you trust Him with your hungry and aching heart?
Jesus comes down from heaven to feed us the Bread of Life—to meet us in our yearnings, our lacking, and our weakness. The next time you receive Holy Communion, ask the Lord to open your heart more fully as you open your mouth to receive Him. He is dying to feed you. This is the flame of God’s love.
In the Easter Season we are closest to God’s promises that are fulfilled in the Resurrection…eternal life. May God bless those of us who need peace, who need happiness and a loving guide by our side..
Our mind is a powerful source of what becomes our reality. Ultimately, the sum of our choices create our life. Through awareness of our weaknesses, we can take a sacred pause and do things differently rather than keep perpetuating the reactions that are ingrained deeply within. We can fast from our brokenness and feast on Gods goodness. The choice is ours, whether we fast or feast. During this easter season, let’s consciously choose to feast!
The ever-changing nature of hunger we experience in the physical world is paralleled in the eternal one. Both must be fed. We must turn to the Lord in faith to teach us His ways, for physical and spiritual nourishment. It is through seeking the Lord in love that we can mature allowing us to fulfill God’s will in the world.
God of all, you fill us in every way, answering the hunger of our hearts. Strengthen our belief and our practice of faith so that we can provide sustenance in a hungry world.
In letting go, we welcome the reality of our life as it is. It doesn’t mean that we don’t want or need change or growth but it means that we accept what comes our way and invite God into it. We bring to God our needs, our desires, our thoughts, our emotions, and our circumstances. Instead of fighting these things and those around us, we welcome them and God so that we can be transformed as we consent to His presence in all areas of our lives.
To fight against our reality, to demand and to grasp onto our desires, is one way of denying that God alone is our Source of Life, that God is our Source for Love and Power. When we “cling” to our needs and our desires or demands that “what is” be different we are attempting to control. When we “let go” and meet God in our reality, then we actually do become free and experience His presence – which does heal, provide our needs, transform us….. If we grasp and control our lives we will inevitably create “substitutes” for a genuine resting in God and His provision.
What are your substitutes?
Welcome, welcome, welcome.
I welcome everything that comes to me today, because I know it’s for my healing.
I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations, and conditions.
I let go of my desire for power and control.
I let go of my desire for affection, esteem, approval, and pleasure.
I let go of my desire for survival and security.
I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person or myself.
I open to the love and presence of God and God’s action within. Amen
HOLY – WHOLLY – HOLEY Three words that sound alike, are spelled differently, have their own distinct meaning and yet are connected one with the other.
The third is HOLEY – H-O-L-E-Y.
This holey is porous, permeable, spacious, expansive. I think of a donut hole. The hole of the donut offers a space, a spaciousness. Without its hole, it would be a different pastry. For us, the holey space is a place of being. It is not for doing, it has no form for doing. It is a space, which allows inner stillness that fosters authentic connection. I think of the womb, a spaciousness where a child becomes. In the silence and spaciousness of this holey space, a song, a poem, or this reflection is born.
Rabbi Mosche Gersht says, “It is in this inner spaciousness that we monitor our inner dialogue. From this spaciousness, the true power of who we are will shine the way it was meant to be. Everything seems to emanate from this space, there is a source of being in truth.” This space is that deep knowing that we experience. A knowing that seems to be filled with goodness, with God-ness inside, a place where our creator God is guiding, directing and moving the world toward the highest good. This kind of holey is a space inside us that allows creativity, connection and love to expand. It seems to me that it is the spaciousness of the tomb in which Jesus becomes the Christ of Resurrection.
Hafiz, the Sufi mystic and Persian poet, writes, “I am a hole in a flute that Christ’s breath moves through…..listen to the music.”
To become holey we rest and stay in silence where there is a space where we can authentically engage with the Divine. Perhaps, this prayer by Christin Lore Weber is ours to consciously consider: The world needs the hollowness of you. At times, this hollowness will be a passage that people will find their way through you. Or your hollowness will be a bowl and people will eat from you and not know hunger. Your hollowness will be a cup for those who thirst from suffering, they will find wisdom and love as they drink from you.
I believe from this spaciousness we may discover our sameness and oneness as the human race, with all creatures and all subatomic atoms. From this spaciousness, we will believe all are equal, all is one, and all is love. We will know there is a difference, but not separation, only connectivity.
HOLY – WHOLLY – HOLEY
Lord, Weave these three ways of being into one and allow us to become the manifestation Your glory…the Glory of God. Allow us to become radiant and who we are born to be. May our Easter Season and long beyond be holy, wholly and holey!
Excerpt from Easter Vigil Reflection March 30, 2024 Sister Marie Therese “MT” Summers, OSB, Prioress, Benet Hill Monastery
HOLY – WHOLLY – HOLEY Three words that sound alike, are spelled differently, have their own distinct meaning and yet are connected one with the other.
The second WHOLLY – W-H-O-L-L-Y. This wholly means complete, total, altogether. It is this wholeness that is a journey of the undivided life, living a full life. Thomas Merton says it is about living with the grace and integrity of being your whole self, your true self. He writes, “there is in all things … a hidden wholeness.” Other spiritual writers down through the ages say wholeness is holiness. Wholeness and holiness are connected, intertwined into one. This is why when we have a direct experience of our wholeness, it tends to feel like a mystical experience of gratitude, love, and abounding energy.
Lord, draw me to wholeness and holiness today. Created in Your image, I grant You permission to heal me and shine your light in the darkness of my heart.. Jesus, I trust in You! Amen
Excerpt from Easter Vigil Reflection March 30, 2024 Sister Marie Therese “MT” Summers, OSB, Prioress, Benet Hill Monastery
Smitten With Goodness 