Taking it Home: We have immersed ourselves anew into the Passion and Death of Jesus and so now, on this day of days, we rise triumphant with Jesus from the waters of new life. We began our Paschal season with Lent on March 6 when we received our ashes as we resolved to keep those nest six weeks in acts of prayer, fasting and charity. During Lent we were called to purge ourselves of all that might prevent us from once again committing ourselves to Christ and the promises that we made in our baptism. We taught ourselves to die to our weakness and sin by seeking reconciliation and turning to God in our need. But now as we once again plunge into the water of baptism, we experience anew the vitality and the freshness that new life in Jesus brings - we rise in the glory that resurrected life now is. We celebrate that death no longer has its sting; that sorrow has turned into joy; and that despite our still broken lives there is yethope for us and our world. This is the joy that we celebrate today and for the next fifty days of Easter.
  But just like Lent takes time to change our hearts so Easter as a season takes time to wear on us; time to allow the joy and love of this great mystery of our faith, the gift of new and eternal life, to take possession of us. Easter is a season of fifty days, concluding with the Solemnity of Pentecost, a season which by its number is indicative of its greater importance. But often we fail to recognize this significance and instead think of Lent as truly being the bigger season of change. But Easter really does call us to live in the new life that Jesus by his Pachal Mystery has set before us.
  And so we do really need Easter just as much, if not more so, than we need Lent. Yes, during Lent we focus on our sinfulness and our separation from God, which is good because it helps us understand our limitations and this, I think, keeps us honest. But in Easter, we dwell not on our limitations and our faults, but on our goodness and the hope, which comes from the love of God, and this goodness and hopeis greater than our sin and, in fact, overcomes it. Unfortunately, we do not take the time during Easter, or too many other times for that matter, to dwell in our goodness and the hope our faith gives us and so our faith gets skewed. We tend to focus more and more on our sin and our lack of worthiness and so we are not always fully alive. Yes, we are sinners, but we are saved sinners. Yes, we ate not perfect, but God chooses to love us anyway. We are God's creation and as God's creation, we are capable of the good that God has planted within us.
  When we rise from the waters of our baptism we say that we are a new creation. This new creation that we become is the new life that Christ has gifted us with. When we live in this new life, we say that this new life is resurrected life. It is living in the freedom that comes with being loved unconditionally. It is being graced with the Spirit and being loved beyond our imagining. Ane because we are so loved we are set free to live life as Jesus lived his life. This means that we can risk choosing to love others. We can show the compassion that Jesus showed and we can really be the face and hands of Jesus.
   This is why Easter is so important to our faith because it helps us dwell on how we might produce the good fruit we are capable of producing with God's grace. We need to savor God's love and savor the indwelling of the Spirit, which fires our hearts with God's love. This is the reson for our joy and the reason why we should heartily celebrate this season. And this is the reason we can proclaim our Easter "Alleluia" with such vigor because indeed the Lord has truly risen!          

- Deacon John