| He is Risen! |
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| escrito por Fr. Juan Quevedo-Bosch | |||||||
| Saturday, 11 de April de 2009 | |||||||
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NO_TRANSLATION_AVAILABLE My grandmother was stingy with money, having grown through the depression. I went every summer to her house in the seaside town where I was born and that for me city boy, looked like paradise. I spend my summers playing in her vast backyard, filled with pomegranate, prunes and sour sap trees, the fences were overgrown with white, purple and yellow bougainvillaeas. Her garden was the world to a child of seven years of age. It was high on the prune tree where I built my first secret chapel and set my first handmade cross. She used to allow me to sit on her lap and explore her very cracked earlobes. She would never fuss or appeared in discomfort over my heavy presence all while she was smoking, talking to her girlfriends and sipping dark, strong Cuban coffee. While sitting on her lap, I would follow with my finger every prominence, every significant crack, every skin fold of her earlobes. It was like I was reading a map with my own hand. I was fascinated by her crumpled skin in comparison with younger complexion. She was never too expressive in her affection but she would let me be and never seemed flustered by my presence. She never went to church, or read the bible, she had a vague idea about God, but I never saw her praying. However, it was my grandmother who taught to love, the worth a hug, a kiss. The last time I saw her was in 1980, she looked disoriented and when I asked her if she knew who I was, she laughed and told me “my grandson Juan Andres playing doctor”. She shortly after passed away of emphysema in a hospital in Miami, where she went to live with her daughters. I was heart broken when it happened. Her loss so great to bear that I could not cry for months. Last year, in Amsterdam I was totally miserable, apart from my wife for five months, I was hating my stay in that country, one night I had a dream. I saw all my loved ones that have passed away, but my grandmother was prominent and clear in my dream, we were by a canal -remember I was in Holland- the water was of tropical green and there was a big boat and there was a problem with my ticket to board and my grandmother was going to pay for it when I awoke. Last night we had an incredible service. The Easter Vigil is my favorite service of the year, it last about two hours, most of which takes place in the dark, we hear the stories of God’s salvation of his people through history, beginning with the story of creation, all through Exodus until Jesus’s own time. It is an amazing list of readings. Towards the end of these reading we baptized five candidates, Shingirai, Valarie, Jordan, Jaime, Patrick and Tudor. Then shortly after I told the congregation Christ is Risen and they responded The Lord is risen indeed!, three times I greeted the congregation with these words and then finally we intoned the first Gloria of these fifty days of Lent and with it many bells people had in their hands went out as well. Then I was seized then by a moment of spiritual reality: what would it mean for our world if he had truly risen? On Friday Jesus' closest friends had let the relentless crush of history snuff out all their dreams. Two days later, when the crazy rumors about Jesus' missing body shot through Jerusalem, they couldn't dare to believe. … Only personal appearances by Jesus convinced them that something new, absolutely new, had broken out on earth. When that sank in, those same men who had slunk away in fear at Calvary were soon preaching to large crowds in the streets of Jerusalem.(Phillip Yancey) What would it mean for us her family if my grandmother rose again? Overwhelmed by days of grief and sadness after her funeral, the weight of death bearing down upon us. What would it be like to walk outside to the parking lot of the funeral parlor and there, to our utter astonishment, find Grandma. With her spirited walk, her key chain hanging from her waist, on her way to do some domestic chores, with her metallic blue eyes. That image gave me a hint of what Jesus' disciples felt on the first Easter. They, too, had grieved for three days. But on Sunday they caught a glimpse of something else, a startling clue to the riddle of the universe. Easter hits a new note, a note of hope and faith that what God did once in a graveyard in Jerusalem, he can and will repeat on a grand scale, for the world. For Grandma. For all of us. The gospel message says: "You don't live in a mechanistic world ruled by necessity; you don't live in a random world ruled by chance; you live in a world ruled by the God of Exodus and Easter. He will do things in you that neither you nor your friends would have supposed possible." Wolfhart Pannenberg, German theologian said: The evidence for Jesus' resurrection is so strong that nobody would question it except for two things: First, it is a very unusual event. And second, if you believe it happened, you have to change the way you live. One sleepy Sunday afternoon the five-years-old son of a pastor friend of mine, drove past a cemetery with his dad. Noticing a large pile of dirt beside a newly excavated grave, he pointed and said: "Look, Dad, one got out!" He laughed, but now, every time I see a fresh excavated tomb I am reminded that One did got out. Despite our best efforts to keep him out, God intrudes. Since the life of Jesus is bracketed by two impossibilities: a virgin's womb and an empty tomb. Jesus entered our world through a door marked "No Entrance" and left through a door marked "No Exit." It is because I believe in the witness of over 500 people who saw Him got out that I know that my life possibilities are not closed, not even by my mistakes or by my achievements, that because of Jesus resurrection a door to eternity is permanently open, it is into this paradigm that we have brought last night Shingirai, Valarie, Jordan, Jaime, Patrick and Tudor who are now property fo Christ for ever. Christ is Risen! The Lord is risen indeed!
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