The Best Easter Gift Ever: Weekly Message for 04-16-2019

Dear Fellow Digital Pilgrims, pax Christi:

As some of you know, my dad (who passed away a few years ago), was not a man of faith while I was growing up.  But even so, he relished celebrating Easter.

In my family, we loved sports.  And my dad especially loved baseball.  He had been a professional baseball player, spending about seven years in the minor leagues after he graduated high school.  And since Easter usually coincided with the beginning of a new baseball season, I would always wake up on Easter morning to find some new baseball paraphernalia at the foot of my bed (like a new Louisville Slugger), along with a large Easter basket full of scrumptious candy (we all loved candy – especially chocolate eggs and fruit-flavored jelly beans).  

I am convinced now that my dad’s primary love language was gift giving.  Easter, for him, was an opportunity to show his love for us kids by giving us some thoughtful gifts.  

Over the years, as strange as it may sound, remembering those images from my childhood Easters has become one of the ways I prepare myself to live the sacred liturgies of Holy Week.  After all, it is during Christ’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection – commemorated each year through those liturgies – that God the Father gives us the most precious gift of all, simply because he loves us.  Holy Week is the unfolding of the famous verse from the Gospel of John:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (John 3:16).

It is our sincere hope here at RCSpirituality that our many resources, especially our Lenten and Easter Retreat Guides, will help you discover afresh during these upcoming holy days the beauty, richness, and depths of God’s love as shown forth through Christ’s self-giving in the Paschal Mystery.  

The blood he shed to redeem us from our sins is infinitely sweeter than the sweetest chocolate, and his rising from the dead on Easter Sunday is infinitely greater than the greatest home run in human history, and we want to make it as easy as possible for you to find some extra time to spend with the Lord, prayerfully savoring those gifts of his everlasting love.

May God bless you and keep you! 

In Him,

Fr John Bartunek, LC