Easter is the celebration of God’s love for the world, made manifest through the life, passion, death and
resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ. It is the axis upon which our Christian faith rotates. Without the
resurrection, our faith would be meaningless, and the resurrection would be
meaningless without the passion of Jesus.
The greatest love story ever
told is relived every year at the Easter Triduum, wherein Jesus lived in its
fullness all that He preached during His lifetime. Let’s have a look at how He
did it.
The first day of the Easter
triduum is Maundy Thursday. On this day,
the Church commemorates Jesus’ institution of the sacrament of the Eucharist
and the Holy Priesthood. The only form in which Jesus would appear to the world
today is in the form of bread as a major part of the world, sleeps in hunger. The
world waits with eager longing for the satisfaction of their spiritual hunger
for God with spiritual bread. The breaking of bread that happened at the Last
Supper, should happen at the altar of our lives every day through our service
to others. Jesus became food and drink for us all, let us in turn be food and
water for each other daily.
The world today tells us to
seek success, power, and money; but God tells us to seek divinity, humility,
service and love. At the meal of the manifestation of the greatest love one can
have, the apostles were lost in seeking the greatest among them, but Jesus
revealed through the washing of feet that the one who is in authority, in other
words, the greatest is called to serve and not to be served.
The second day of the
Triduum is Good Friday, where the love story reaches its climax. Jesus, who had
just said that He would give us His body and blood for nourishment, gave
himself up to death for the salvation of our souls. One of the only thing He
could call His own was the cross and through it, He bought us our redemption.
Good Friday is also a call for each of us to realize how much God loves us and
come back to His loving embrace, to be cleansed of all our sins in His precious
blood and begin anew.
The third day of the triduum
is Holy Saturday, a day when we watch and pray with the sorrowful mother of
Jesus, whom He gave us as our own mother. Through Her entire life this
courageous virgin accepted the will of God and is now at the test of her faith
as she watched her own Son die before her in the most gruesome manner on earth.
Yet, she continued to firmly believe that God would fulfill all that He said.
With her we await the day of the glorious resurrection.
At the Easter vigil, we
await the Resurrection through contemplation on the love of God which He showed
from the very beginning of time and continued to show to His people despite all
our unbelief.
And then the day of the
Resurrection; the day when Jesus won the victory of over death and rose
triumphant from the tomb. Yes, the tomb is empty, He has risen. Easter is a proof that our faith is joyful,
but not without thorns. Only through death will we have a resurrection. The
cross is not the end of our faith, but the resurrection is.
Let us be an Easter people,
alleluia is our song of joy. May Jesus grant us the eyes of Easter that can
look past death and see life, look past division and see unity, look past
ugliness and see splendor, look into the human person and see God, look at God
and see every human, look past I and see U.
JESUS IS RISEN! HE IS TRULY RISEN!
This
flower has been an auspicious symbol of Indian culture since time immemorial. Choice
of Lotus As National Flower - The Lotus Flower symbolizes
divinity, fertility, wealth, knowledge and enlightenment. It is also regarded
as a symbol of triumph as it can survive to re-germinate for thousands of
years. Lotus represents long life, honor, and good fortune. Untouched by the
impurity despite growing in mud, the flower is also meant to symbolize the
purity of heart and mind. 
