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Happy Easter! Even though the Easter lilies in the Chapel have wilted and died, the Easter season is celebrated in our Catholic Church for 50 days. The Scripture readings we hear proclaimed during the Easter season move from grief and fear to excitement and joy. I like to call this week’s encounter with the risen Christ, Breakfast on the Beach. When Peter realized it was Jesus on the shore, he jumped in the Sea, clothes and all to swim to his friend. Jesus invited him and the rest of the disciples to join him for a breakfast of fish and bread cooked over a charcoal fire. What an exchange of friendship and love!
During spring break several students and I were in Kansas City for a service trip. One day we set up a charcoal grill in the park, grilled hamburgers and invited the residents of a “tent city” to join us for a Picnic in the Park. While eating together we talked about the places we’ve lived, the jobs we’ve had, the music we enjoyed, and our families. This encounter over a meal was also a mutual exchange of friendship and love!
As we continue to celebrate Easter and wrap up the end of spring semester, may we take time to share a meal (or a cup of coffee) with those we love and care about and in the process encounter the Risen Christ in our midst.
Have a question about a program or event going on in Campus Ministry? Got an idea for something you'd like to see happen? EMAIL US at ministry@sau.edu.
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“I dread Holy Week.”
It was an honest and simple statement from the gentle woman sitting in front of me. She spoke not only for herself, but for most of us, bearing some of the weight we all carry when faced with the prospect of the Passion of Jesus Christ.
How like Jesus himself.
He desired to eat the meal but dreaded the thought of drinking the cup. When the awful time came, he was as clear and straightforward as the reluctant woman who feared the Passion: “Father, if it is your will, take this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done.” He tasted the anguish. He bled with worry.
But as the great Isaiah prophesied, this God-With-Us would not turn back. He remained unshielded before the battle of life and death. Face set like flint, he clung only to the one who sent him - his Father.
My friend who so dreaded Holy Week had it quite right. It is an inevitable, dreaded season of life. We die our thousand deaths. We pour out our hearts and tears for our young, mourn the lost loved one, the broken companion, the unraveling parent. We sweat the love and bleed the sorrow.
“If only there were a way out,” we think.
But unexpectedly, wondrously, the one who did not have to be like us, and still chose to, did not flee. He entered the garden of Gethsemane to repair the garden of Eden. Not clinging to the robes of power and authority, he took the towel of a slave to wash our feet. He taught us how to love, and how to live.
CS Lewis wrote in his Poems that love was as warm as tears: unsettling, uninvited, cleansing, and comforting. It was fierce as fire, flickering with life, smoldering with rage, constant as an eternal flame. Love, too, was as fresh as spring, new and alive, daring and bold. But he ended this song of Love with the most telling piece of all:
Love’s as hard as nails. Love is nails. Blunt, thick, hammered through The medial nerves of One Who, having made us, knew The thing He had done, Seeing (with all that is) Our cross, and His.
The wood of the cross, on which hung the Savior of the world, remains waiting for us. It bore the one who says to us, now and eternally, from the cross: “You are worth it.”
Have a question about a program or event going on in Campus Ministry? Got an idea for something you'd like to see happen? EMAIL US at ministry@sau.edu.
