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Easter Sunday, (April 17, 2022)
Your Daily Blessing: May the Lord grant you grace to rise from your grave - no matter the type! Amen.
Read Gospel (John 20:1-9).
I have had difficult many moments in my life; and I believe we all have. I remember particularly year 1993 when I was in the novitiate, a spiritual year in preparation to be a Dominican friar.
The entire community of novices and students had a football match with the Redemptorists brothers (a congregation of priests and student brothers like us). I was chosen to be the goalkeeper.
During the match, I saved many goal bound balls. It was in a bid to save one goal bound ball that one of the redemptorist strikers, played my hand instead of the ball. It was so forceful that the bone of my index finger came out of its socket!
I was rushed to hospital; and the wound was made worse each time. I had three different surgeries, and each one was worse than the last. I decided not to try another one ever since, even while abroad when I could have done corrective surgery easily. I decided to carry my cross in plain view. It remains one of my most painful experiences, and my daily cross.
I am not sure I have completely healed of it. Why? Partly because up till now, the person that inflicted that wound has yet to say “I am sorry.” But I have moved on despite it, but it hurts! I have other life encounters, good and bad, and so have you.
Today we celebrate Easter. It comes out of a gory story that compared to mine story, mine could pale as insignificant. But hold it there! The story of “Good” Friday is a cosmic relief for all our individual “bad” Fridays. It is a cosmic relief because it transforms our individual bad Fridays into something we learn to celebrate overtime, drawing strength from the reality of the resurrection itself. Though I said I have not completely healed from mine bad Friday, I can tell you that I have come a long way since the experience simply by reflecting on Jesus’ experience. And so should you.
We are all broken by our individual bad experiences, we are never overcome by them if we keep focusing on that power that raised Jesus from his grave. We too will in no time find our own Easter Sunday morning.
I, therefore, wish you all still sulking from your experiences, to look up not just at the cross on which you hang as if helpless, as it were, but take a peep at the empty grave.
Prayer: Dear Lord, you are the one who knows all my pain and the path of pain I must walk, please help me not to become despondent, but to experience the power of your resurrection in my own life! Amen!
🙏🏽❤️Fr AU Ebido OP
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