Easter's Promise

 

     We scurried about looking for just the right photo.   In the center page of spring's Journey and the Joy, the message read:   “Easter, and all we can become, break forth within my soul.”   (A bit of Rilke, adapted.)   Surely, an Easter lily in bloom would image the saying.   We found, though, that it was too early for lilies.   The pre-Easter time had not yet finished its work. Still, we knew that Easter would come, and with it, a sense that all we have been promised will come to be.  

 

     Jesuit Karl Rahner, with his exceedingly long German sentences, addresses the three great longings of the human heart:

 

1. We long to love another with all that we are, holding nothing back, and to be loved in return without reservation.
2. We long for the assurance that, in the end, and even during our everyday life, good will triumph over evil.
3. Lastly, when our time comes to leave this world, we long to fall into the embrace of a loving Presence, and to be held by God, forever.

      

     We can only ask ourselves: “Are there other deeply human longings?”   With the sun, Easter rises within the soul.   The Risen One walks among us.   All these promises, and even more, will surely come to be.   Alleluia!

 

Sister Mary Jo Loebig, O.C.D.

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