Easter 2017.
Recently I took a 6am Ryanair flight, I had the window seat, and as the sun began to rise, the air hostess who had stopped at the row I was seated in, leant in and looked out of the window and marvelled at the sunrise and remarked that it was the time of day in which she felt closest to God. She went on to say that she had named her daughter Alba, which in Italian and Spanish means ‘Sunrise’.
We associate the Resurrection of Jesus with dawn or sunrise, with new light, with a new birth, a new day, new life and possibilities. In Amoris Laetitia Pope Francis writes of families gathered in prayer in the light of Easter; he writes that if faith in Christ is part of family life then he will unify and illumine the entire life of the family. He notes that married couples (and I think that we can extend it to apply to each of us in our relationships with others) ‘shape with different daily gestures a God-enlighted space in which to experience the hidden presence of the risen Lord’.
May this vision and a commitment to live it, be ours this Easter season, to shape with the gestures, activities, words and expressions of daily living a God-enlightened space where we, and those we share life with, may experience this hidden and life-giving presence of the risen Lord Jesus.
Happy Easter.