Christ himself pointed out the benefit of his sufferings and resurrection when he said to the women in Mt 28, 10 – “Fear not: go tell my brethren that they depart into Galilee, and there shall they see me.” These are the very first words they heard from Christ after his resurrection from the dead, by which he confirmed all the former utterances and loving deeds he showed them, namely, that his resurrection avails in our behalf who believe, so that he therefore anticipates and calls Christians his brethren, who believe it, and yet they do not, like the apostles, witness his resurrection.

The risen Christ waits not until we ask or call on him to become his brethren. Do we here speak of merit, by which we deserve anything? What did the apostles merit? Peter denied his Lord three times; the other disciples all fled from him; they tarried with him like a rabbit does with its young. He should have called them deserters, yea, betrayers, reprobates, anything but brethren. Therefore this word is sent to them through the women out of pure grace and mercy, as the apostles at the time keenly experienced, and we experience also, when we are mired fast in our sins, temptations and condemnation.

These are words full of all comfort that Christ receives desperate villains as you and I are and calls us his brethren. Is Christ really our brother, then I would like to know what we can be in need of? Just as it is among natural brothers, so is it also here. Brothers according to the flesh enjoy the same possessions, have the same father, the one inheritance, otherwise they would not be brothers: so we enjoy with Christ the same possessions, and have in common with him one Father and one inheritance, which never decreases by being distributed, as other inheritances do; but it ever grows larger and larger; for it is a spiritual inheritance. But an earthly inheritance decreases when distributed among many persons. He who has a part of this spiritual inheritance, has it all.

Read it all.

He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

We wish you a joyful #Easter. pic.twitter.com/QKjRNujys4

— St Paul’s Cathedral (@StPaulsLondon) April 1, 2018

Read it all.

The Latest Edition of the Diocese of #SouthCarolina Enewsletter https://t.co/7nkadTzPup #parishministry #lowcountrylife #anglican #churchgrowth #theology pic.twitter.com/5rpg9FSyDT

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) April 25, 2019

Listen to it all.

I dug around and found a high quality version of Mary Magdalene and the “Gardener” (aka, Jesus in an AWESOME hat) by Rembrandt so that you didn’t have to. 🙂 pic.twitter.com/oBsk3yVbLE

— Karina Tabone (@Illustr_Prayer) April 24, 2019

This takes us to the heart of John’s extraordinary Easter message. The thing John celebrates in the resurrection and imminent ascension of the Lord Jesus is the restoration, and the transformation, of relationships. In this case, it’s his relationship with Mary: as he speaks her name and she replies, ‘Dear Rabbi’, their relationship is restored; as he then commissions her to be what the Orthodox Church calls the apostle to the apostles, taking the good news of the resurrection to the other disciples, their relationship is transformed.

And it’s clear from the errand entrusted to Mary that Jesus’ relationships with those other disciples are also about to be restored and transformed. The Lord tells her, ‘Go to my brothers’. Do you know that’s the first time in John’s Gospel that Jesus has referred to them that way? Previously, Jesus has called them his servants, and even his friends. But his death and resurrection have so restored and transformed relationships that he now refers to his disciples as his brothers. Again, Jesus has spoken often in this gospel of ‘the Father’ and even of ‘my Father’. ‘My Father and I are one’ he said, ‘My Father is still working and I am working’. ‘I have come in my Father’s name’. But right here is the first time in John’s Gospel that Jesus has referred to God as ‘your Father’. Again, until this moment Jesus has never spoken of the Father as ‘your God’. But through the death and resurrection of Jesus, relationships are not just restored, but transformed: Jesus’ God becomes ‘our God’, his Father becomes ‘our Father’.

And sure enough in the rest of the gospel we will see Jesus’ relationships with his brothers restored and transformed: restored, as he invites sceptical Thomas to see and even to touch his wounds; and transformed as he then commissions him, with the other disciples, in those words ‘As the Father sent me so I send you’; restored, as he gently asks Peter, three times over, ‘Do you love me?’ (once for each denial); and transformed as he then commissions him, equally gently, to feed his sheep (once for each denial).

I must stop. You know, if it wasn’t for the first Easter Day, no one would ever have dreamed of celebrating the Christmas. If it wasn’t for the Lord’s resurrection, there’s no way we’d celebrate his nativity.

So why celebrate the resurrection? According to John, it’s because in and it through it, we become brothers and sisters of the Lord Jesus; in it and through it, we find that Jesus’ God is our God, his Father is our Father. In it and through it, our relationships with the Living God are first restored and then transformed, as we first hear the Risen Lord calling us by name, and then hear him commissioning us to share the good news with others.

Read it all.

@PeteWilcox1564 in the day of his installation as the 8th #BishopOfSheffield pic.twitter.com/0bskA08UDX

— DioceseofSheffield (@DioceseofSheff) September 23, 2017

Tomb, thou shalt not hold Him longer;
Death is strong, but Life is stronger;
Stronger than the dark, the light;
Stronger than the wrong, the right.
Faith and Hope triumphant say,
Christ will rise on Easter-Day.

While the patient earth lies waking,
Till the morning shall be breaking,
Shuddering ‘neath the burden dread
Of her Master, cold and dead,
Hark! she hears the angels say,
Christ will rise on Easter-Day.
And when sunrise smites the mountains,
Pouring light from heavenly fountains,
Then the earth blooms out to greet
Once again the blessed feet;
And her countless voices say,
Christ has risen on Easter-Day.

Up and down our lives obedient
Walk, dear Christ, with footsteps radiant,
Till those garden lives shall be
Fair with duties done for Thee;
And our thankful spirits say,
Christ arose on Easter-Day.

–Phillips Brooks (1835-1893)

Bursting with life pic.twitter.com/jmw7YbliSR

— Kathryn Jean Lopez (@kathrynlopez) April 24, 2019

First, the “nones” are certainly not a new group of unbelievers exiting the pews of our nation’s churches. They are merely a group who are identifying more accurately what they have always been, those without any real religious practice.

Dr. Ed Stetzer, who holds the distinguished Billy Graham Chair of Church, Missions, and Evangelism at Wheaton College, has given one of the best clarifying explanations of the nones that I’ve seen. In USA Today, he wrote that “Christianity isn’t collapsing, it’s being clarified.”

He is precisely right. He further explains, “Nominal Christians are becoming the nones and convictional Christians remain committed.” This is the precise secret to understanding what’s going on. Weak Christianity is getting weaker and robust, and orthodox Christianity is getting stronger in terms of adherents, if not by theological maturity.

The nones are simply those who until recently would have identified with a Christian denomination just because that’s what their family has always been. But their pastors know they are just CEO Christians (Christmas and Easter Only). Beyond that, it’s crickets attendance-wise. Even though most are inactive, many do hold some cold-to-lukewarm Christian beliefs in the back of their minds. According to Pew, almost a third say that religion is indeed important to them. So the nones are not some new and growing crowd of atheists, agnostics, or unbelievers.

Other leading sociologists of religion report the same thing. Rodney Stark of Baylor University, one of the world’s leading and most distinguished scholars in this field, gives the same explanation in his important book, “The Triumph of Faith: Why the World Is More Religious Than Ever”: “Today, when asked their religious preference, instead of saying Methodist or Catholic, now a larger proportion of non-attenders say ‘none,’ by which they most seem to mean ‘no actual membership.’”

Stark gets more precise: “The entire change [toward none-ness] has taken place with the non-attending group.”

Read it all.

thank goodness for someone speaking sense on this subject // No, Non-Believers Are Not Increasing In America https://t.co/cBYPH0TdOY @FDRLST

— Thomas S. Kidd (@ThomasSKidd) April 24, 2019

50 years ago, the world was looking towards space – waiting for the first moon landing.”

At the time, US President Richard Nixon described it as ‘the greatest week in the history of the world since Creation!’ The great preacher Billy Graham quickly corrected him – saying that far greater was the week of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

If you were alive in 1969 you would remember exactly where you were when Neil Armstrong took that first ‘small step for a man and one giant leap for mankind.’ Although none of us were there when Jesus lived and died – his resurrection was so significant that we remember and celebrate it every year and will continue to do so until he returns.

The resurrection of Jesus guarantees that no matter how far we have strayed, there is a way for us to be friends with God – and live with him forever.

Although none of us were there when Jesus lived and died – his resurrection was so significant that we remember and celebrate it every year and will continue to do so until he returns.

Happy Resurrection Day – Happy Easter.

#Easter Prayer ‘Almighty God, Who art worshipped by the heavenly host w hymns that R nvr silent+thnksgvngs tht nvr cease: fill our mths wh Thy praise tht we may worthily magnify Thy holy Name 4 all the wnderfl blssngs of Thy love,+chiefly.4 the Resurrectn’ https://t.co/RKUtyfr6oA pic.twitter.com/Q5fgbwKVnQ

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) April 24, 2019

If there’s anything Catholics in the United States should have learned over the past two decades, it’s that order—in the world, the republic, and the Church—is a fragile thing. And by “order,” I don’t mean the same old same old. Rather, I mean the dynamic development of world politics, our national life, and the Church within stable reference points that guide us into the future.

Many of those reference points seem to have come unstuck, and that’s why we’re experiencing an unusual amount of air turbulence these days….Those who don’t remember the two decades immediately after Vatican II and haven’t taken the trouble to learn that history are understandably upset by the fragility of order in the Church today. But they should also understand that this is not 1968, or 1978, or even 1988, and that a lot of ballast was put into the Barque of Peter during the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. For all the challenges it faces, and despite the determination of some to revisit what they regard as the glorious Seventies, the Church in the U.S. is in far, far better condition to withstand the air turbulence of the moment than it was forty years ago. And that’s because truth, spoken winsomely and in charity, but without fudging, has proven a powerful instrument of evangelization and spiritual growth in a culture wallowing in various confusions.

At the bottom of the bottom line is the Resurrection. It’s entirely possible to hold fast to the truth that Jesus of Nazareth was raised by God to a new form of bodily life after his crucifixion and be deeply concerned about the state of the Church today. But it’s not possible to know the Risen Lord and to indulge in despair. Despair died on the cross and unshakeable hope was born at Easter. That’s why Easter faith is the surest anchor for all of us in turbulent times.

Read it all.

Stained glass detail from Chartres Cathedral illustrating today's Gospel of Emmaus: "Then, starting with Moses and going through all the prophets, he explained to them the passages throughout the scriptures that were about himself." (Luke 24:27) https://t.co/CgOQt1XzBK

— Fr Lawrence Lew, O.P. (@LawrenceOP) April 24, 2019

Grant to us, Lord, we beseech Thee, that as we joyfully celebrate the mysteries of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus, so at His coming we may rejoice before Thee with all Thy saints; through the love of Him Who died for us and rose again.

–Frederick B. Macnutt, The prayer manual for private devotions or public use on divers occasions: Compiled from all sources ancient, medieval, and modern (A.R. Mowbray, 1951)

25 April 2019
Easter Thursday

Christ Appears to the Apostles Peter and Paul
Giovanni Battista Crespi, 23.12.1573 – 23.12.1632
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna pic.twitter.com/MOyoaEDn7b

— Kalina Boulter (@KalinaBoulter) April 25, 2019

Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD, O my soul! I will praise the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God while I have being. Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no help. When his breath departs he returns to his earth; on that very day his plans perish. Happy is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps faith for ever…

–Psalm 146:1-3