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Easter: Focus on our Future
Mar
23
Written by:
Sunday, March 23, 2008
March 23, 2008
My favorite picture from childhood was taken on Easter Sunday, right after we got home from church. This was only natural, since we were dressed up, the whole family was visiting, and it was sunny! I have this picture in a place of honor in my home, but it is also a picture with a big flaw. It is slightly out of focus. Why would a fuzzy picture mean so much? Well, to me, a fuzzy picture of a cherished memory is the perfect way to capture the way we remember good times from the past. Like a cherished memory from a distant time past, this photo remains slightly out of focus.
The picture the gospel gives us of Easter Sunday is kind of similar in a way. We are given a vivid and clear image of Jesus rising from the dead. We "see" the picture clearly through faith. But wait! Before turning the page, make sure that this Easter picture from the gospel is also in your family photo album.... but put it on the last page of your life-album because the picture we are given of the resurrection of the dead is actually a picture from our own future as well. In a way, it is quite similar to my favorite childhood picture, because it is out of focus: we have not arrived there yet, and the present world tends to distort the picture.
Life is like a series of photographs or paintings. Those in the past are already framed and hanging on the wall of your inner home: your soul. Perhaps some are out of focus. Perhaps more than a few have needed "retouching" by being forgiven in the Sacrament of Reconciliation! Easter Sunday is a reminder that we are also people who are headed somewhere. Already, a frame exists in your own life-story with a picture that will not be completed until the end of our lives. We know that Jesus is in it, and we can see him already. Where do we fit in? Where am I going after death? What kind of world will we be in? So the picture is not totally in focus yet!
Easter Sunday is our hopeful picture. The people in my fuzzy childhood picture (except for me!) have all passed away. I pray daily that, in that last picture of life, they will be in it. Jesus, who has risen from the dead, asks us to have faith in him and to live as if we have faith. He wants to give us a picture of hope for the future. Once we have a clearer picture of the hope we have in Jesus, we want to do everything possible to be ready to enter that last picture of our lives by living a life pleasing to Jesus. The picture may be somewhat fuzzy now, since we are not there yet, but our faith helps us to keep our focus on that very real place, the world of Jesus, that will never end.
Father Gary
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