Alleluia! Christ is risen! Indeed, He is risen! Alleluia!

Today we have a recurring guest blogger:  Fr. Arthur F. Rojas, administrator of PRESENTATION OF THE B.V.M CHURCH, PORT EWEN AND SACRED HEART CHURCH, ESOPUS. For more information on this parish, check out their website at Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary & Sacred Heart Churches - Port Ewen - Esopus, NY (presentationsacredheart.org) 

Scripture readings for today can be found at Third Sunday of Easter | USCCB

 Submission to the blog of Dcn. Thomas Tortorella for the III Sunday of Easter

by Rev. Fr. Arthur F. Rojas © All Rights Reserved © April 22, 2023

Alleluia! Christ is risen! Indeed, He is risen! Alleluia! This is how Catholics of the Byzantine rite greet and respond to each other during the season of Easter. What a simple yet elegant way to proclaim the Good News! Maybe we Roman Catholics should borrow this greeting from the Christian East.

When I was studying for the sacred priesthood at St. Joseph’s Seminary (a.k.a. “Dunwoodie”) at Yonkers, New York, among the courses in Sacred Scripture that I took was a course on the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. One point that I remember is that these two books may be read together as one half leading to the other, namely Luke to Acts. As the Good News of the resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ in body and soul suffuses our liturgy, hopefully our greetings to each other (recall how I started above this missive to you), and further I hope, our daily lives, a theme of looking at recent and current events in the light of the Good News is evident in the first reading (Acts 2:14,22-33) and the Gospel reading (Lk 24:13-35) of today in the Ordinary Form.

Amidst the growing challenges for us Catholics to live openly and pass on the True Faith to future generations as well as to our neighbors, we may endure misunderstanding, scorn, rejection, and in various parts of the world, even worse afflictions out of loyalty to the Risen Christ, our Lord and Redeemer. We do so because “Lord, You will show us the path to life,” as we sing or proclaim in the Responsorial Psalm (cf. Psalm 16) of today in the Ordinary Form. Only if Our Lord truly is the one Savior for each and every human being and that His offer and teachings of salvation – which were vindicated by His resurrection and further by His ascension into Heaven – is applicable to each and every human being on Earth (cf. Dominus Iesus, 2000, Congregation for the Defense of the Faith, www.vatican.va), can therefore we be persuaded to follow Christ with perseverance in good times and adversity. Thus, with respect to all the saints, we extol the saints who were missionaries or martyrs for their even more extraordinary example in valuing, sharing, and sacrificing for our Catholic religion, which was founded by Jesus Christ Himself, as the way to holiness in this life and eternal life with God thereafter. Moreover, at our parish, we try to remember our brethren here on Earth who take great risks to live our common faith today, even to the point of resisting attempts to convert them to other religions or to adopt certain ideologies or philosophies in place of God and the True Faith as supreme in their lives.

In the second reading today in the Ordinary Form (1 Peter 1:17-21), St. Peter supplements the other readings with direction to his readers and listeners – including you and me at Mass – in the here and now. “Beloved: If you invoke as Father him who judges impartially according to each one’s works, conduct yourselves with reverence during the time of your sojourning, realizing that you were ransomed from your futile conduct…with the precious blood of Christ…so that your faith and hope are in God.” (cf. 1 Pt 1:17-21) This wisdom applies directly to our First Holy Communicants who will receive the Word-made-flesh at the morning Mass today at Presentation Church and to the gentleman who married his wife yesterday at the same church. At that Nuptial Mass, he made his First Holy Communion at age 47, alleluia!

To live as committed, consequential Catholics today is to allow our reception of the Eucharistic Christ to change our outlook on what is happening all around us as well as within us, to reorient our choices, priorities, and deeds in the direction that the Lord would have us take individually and as a community of the True Faith, to help each other to follow the Lord on the path to eternal life, and to show people around us that the Good News of Christ’s Resurrection is for them too. Alleluia! Christ is risen!