There are two significant events within our church calendar that bring people together for great celebrations. They are Christmas and Easter. We know they are significant because both are preceded with a significant time of preparation.
At Christmas we gather to celebrate the birth of Jesus. There really is something magical about celebrating midnight mass with so many others. We return home to decorated houses, presents, and a plan for how to tackle the different gatherings that we will be attending.
During Easter, many of us gather, again at church. We celebrate as a community and possibly gathered with others for an Easter meal. We weren’t, however, preoccupied with presents and decorations. Shopping centres were not full in the week leading up to Easter and there weren’t necessarily various parties that needed to be scheduled into our calendars.
The Easter event is the pivotal celebration of our church. It is the celebration which gives us our ultimate purpose. This is the time in which we celebrate that, through Jesus, we are saved and thus, destined to spend a life with our God. We celebrate that God’s great love for us, in the person of Jesus, has conquered sin, sickness, suffering and death. This truly is a celebration of all that is good.
We gain purpose in that the resurrection means we now live with hope for a life with God, beyond what we could ever imagine. A life liberated from the constraints of this world. A life where all there is, is love.
May the peace, hope and wonder that Easter brings find its way into your lives.
Enrico Caprioli
APRIM
