Preserve me Lord, I take refuge in You. You will show me the path of life, the fullness of joy in your presence, at your right hand happiness for ever. This if you are not aware is extracted from today’s responsorial Psalm and it encapsulates what the true joy of Easter is all about. It is about living in the presence of our resurrected Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Yesterday as we were reflecting on the Easter Sunday readings, I shared with my brother in Christ that just wishing one another ‘Happy Easter’ seemed rather superficial to me. What we all should be doing is living the joy of the resurrection in our lives! Such that when we look upon one another the light of Christ shines forth from us. For example at the Easter Eucharistic celebration I gazed upon the congregation and my heart was filled with joy as I saw many familiar faces which shone with the light of Christ. My fellow brothers and sisters who had journeyed through Lent together, had come to this Celebration of celebrations renewed and fully alive in Him! Their hearts cried out to me, ‘Happy Easter!’
And so filled with awe and great joy let us go out to share the joy of our resurrected Lord with everyone by the way we live our lives. And when they ask us why we remain so joyful even amidst trials and challenges? We can proclaim that Jesus lives in us now and forevermore. Amen
First reading
Acts 2:14,22-33
God raised this man Jesus to life, and all of us are witnesses to this
On the day of Pentecost Peter stood up with the Eleven and addressed the crowd in a loud voice: ‘Men of Israel, listen to what I am going to say: Jesus the Nazarene was a man commended to you by God by the miracles and portents and signs that God worked through him when he was among you, as you all know. This man, who was put into your power by the deliberate intention and foreknowledge of God, you took and had crucified by men outside the Law. You killed him, but God raised him to life, freeing him from the pangs of Hades; for it was impossible for him to be held in its power since, as David says of him:
I saw the Lord before me always,
for with him at my right hand nothing can shake me.
So my heart was glad
and my tongue cried out with joy;
my body, too, will rest in the hope
that you will not abandon my soul to Hades
nor allow your holy one to experience corruption.
You have made known the way of life to me,
you will fill me with gladness through your presence.
‘Brothers, no one can deny that the patriarch David himself is dead and buried: his tomb is still with us. But since he was a prophet, and knew that God had sworn him an oath to make one of his descendants succeed him on the throne, what he foresaw and spoke about was the resurrection of the Christ: he is the one who was not abandoned to Hades, and whose body did not experience corruption. God raised this man Jesus to life, and all of us are witnesses to that. Now raised to the heights by God’s right hand, he has received from the Father the Holy Spirit, who was promised, and what you see and hear is the outpouring of that Spirit.’
Gospel
Matthew 28:8-15
Tell my brothers that they must leave for Galilee: they will see me there
Filled with awe and great joy the women came quickly away from the tomb and ran to tell the disciples.
And there, coming to meet them, was Jesus. ‘Greetings’ he said. And the women came up to him and, falling down before him, clasped his feet. Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers that they must leave for Galilee; they will see me there.’
While they were on their way, some of the guard went off into the city to tell the chief priests all that had happened. These held a meeting with the elders and, after some discussion, handed a considerable sum of money to the soldiers with these instructions, ‘This is what you must say, “His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.” And should the governor come to hear of this, we undertake to put things right with him ourselves and to see that you do not get into trouble.’ The soldiers took the money and carried out their instructions, and to this day that is the story among the Jews.
CatholicJules.net 