Reflection for the Solemnity of the Resurrection 2025

He saw and believed.

Christ is risen! Alleluia!
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Today we encounter the greatest image ever, the empty tomb.

That image is the one, beyond the cross, that God wants us to remember most.

God envisioned that empty tomb for us. It is our hope, it is our comfort. Most importantly it is our assurance, the vision God has for us resurrected and with Him forever.

On that Easter morning, Jesus encounters His faithful in varieties of ways. He greets Mary Magdalene as the Gardener. He walks with the disciples on the Road to Emmaus. He enters the upper room. In each encounter we see God’s image of how life should be, lived with Jesus’ resurrected reality and in the family of faith. There is truly nothing better than to be loved to the extent God loves us.

We concluded on Palm Sunday by remembering the totality of God’s gift of love, great grace, restoration, and His amazing promise. Today we see the reality of that fulfilled promise at the empty tomb. As the Apostle John did,  let us see and believe it.

Reflection for Septuagesima Sunday 2025

Blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD, whose hope is the LORD. He is like a tree planted beside the waters that stretches out its roots to the stream

Welcome to the start of this Pre-Lenten season of Septuagesima.

The Holy Church gives us this season of preparation so we might not jump into the Great Lent unprepared, but ready for a spiritual marathon through which we pray to be transformed. What we are at the end of Lent needs be quite different from what we are at its start.

Keeping up the sports analogies, this season is akin to the stretching exercises an athlete does before they head out onto the track. This season of stretching ourselves helps in preventing spiritual injury – regrets and disappointments – because we were unprepared for our Lenten walk.

I have begun today by drawing pictures for you. Certainly, you can mentally see an image of a marathon runner, an athlete preparing by stretching, and an athlete ill-prepared getting injured.

God uses imagery today as He has done throughout history in order that we might clearly understand His intent for us, the picture He envisions for us.

Consider our first reading. We can see a dead tree standing in the middle of a lava wasteland. That tree has no life and bears no fruit. What could be beautiful and life giving is useless and an occasion for sorrow.

Is that what we would want for our self-vision? Is that what we would want God to see as He looks at us?  Is that what we would want to present before God on the day we meet Him? Of course not!

But if we turn away from God, if He is not our first priority, if His work is somewhere down our list, we are doing our best to end up a dead tree.

Yet, if we take this opportunity for reflection, for a re-evaluation of our self-vision we take the first steps toward being that living and fruitful tree; not only living and fruitful, but also fully assured no matter what may come.

We can see ourselves as that living and fruitful tree when we stretch out our hands and arms in prayer to the God Who lives and is merciful. We live when we turn to God, do His work, and make Him our priority.

It all comes down to what we want to look like in presenting ourselves to God and how we get there. 

Jesus came to show us the road to life, and to remind us of what God desires we pursue. He paints a picture of life and glory for us. So let us now set to work in meeting His vision for us, a living and flourishing people.