I'm taking a break and enjoying time with my daughter Mary Carson who is visiting the rectory for the first time before we retreat to the mountains. While I'm away please visit something I wrote last year. It continues to speak to me and names the hope I have for us as a community of faith.
Start by comparing God's love with what a churchyard full of eggs looks like to a 4 year-older.
Resurrection is Love Set Free
It's all about love. That's what Lent led us into. It was love turning into love, especially as we followed the story through Holy Week. The Triduum, those three days of Maundy Thursday's close, Good Friday's silence and Holy Saturday's discovery, is a love story.
Jesus' love washes the disciples' feet. Jesus' love breaks the bread and shares the cup. His love forgives those who crucified him and reminds us still that they did not know what they were doing. Mary's love embraces His body. God's love -- of love itself -- sustains the world against the silence of the tomb.
Nothing else explains the resurrection better. "For God so loved the world . . ." Just like the love shared between lovers, it sets us free. Love is the highest expression of freedom. You can't have one without the other. No wonder the tomb was empty. Love.
Love can teach us so much! But we have to let it teach us. We forget so quickly and our listening is constrained by something less than love itself. We listen to respond. We listen without breathing. We listen as if we could save our own lives. We listen to beguiling serpents and think ourselves freed by power.
Listening in love allows the good news to take root, fills our emptiness. We are set free by God's love and no longer need to defend, to hunt, to hide. We can surrender to love.
Thanks be to God! Love has the last say. What will we do with this new freedom?
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