Sunday 20^th April – Easter Sunday

Reflection: Colossians 3: 1-4

BROUGHT BACK TO TRUE LIFE

It is Easter Sunday, dear friends; the “Great Sunday” according to St Athanasius. Today we celebrate the essence of our faith – Christ’s resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:14). It is a day of rejoicing in appreciation of the new life purchased for us by our Lord’s suffering, death and resurrection. However, amidst our merriment and jollification, we must never lose sight of the important lessons this great feast offers us.

We all were under the yolk of sin (Romans 3:23), unable to save ourselves. But our Lord Jesus came to pay the ransom for our liberation by His sacrificial death on the cross. Through His glorious resurrection, we are redeemed and empowered to live in the liberty of the new life He has purchased for us. This new life demands from us a willful renunciation of all sinful ways and a conscious pursuit after righteousness. Though the Lenten season is over, we must never go back to our forsaken sinful deeds. There is need for us to consolidate on the gains of Lent.

Until we make this commitment, our celebration of Easter will remain canal and sensual. Dearest friend, let us dedicate ourselves to walking in the true life (i.e the new life) that has been purchased for us so that we can experience the joy and power of Christ’s resurrection and ultimately behold His glory in Heaven.

Prayer: My loving Redeemer, as we celebrate Your glorious resurrection this day, please renew me by the power of Your resurrection that my life may better honor You. Amen.

KNOW YOUR FAITH: YOUCAT 107 – Through his Resurrection, did Jesus return to the physical, corporeal state that he had during his earthly life?

The risen Lord allowed his disciples to touch him; he ate with them and showed them the wounds of his Passion. Nevertheless, his body belonged no longer only to this earth, but rather to the heavenly kingdom of his Father.

The risen Christ, who bore the wounds of the Crucified, was no longer bound by space and time. He could enter through locked doors and appear to his disciples in various places in a form in which they did not recognize him immediately. Christ’s Resurrection was, therefore, not a return to a normal earthly life, but rather his entrance into a new way of being: “For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him” (Rom 6:9)

HIDE A TREASURE: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” Romans 6: 3-4 RSV-CE

Readings for today: Acts 10: 34, 37-43; Psalm 118: 1-2, 16-17, 22-23; Colossians 3: 1-4; John 20: 1-9