Alleuia! Amen! Happy Easter!

Dear Friends,

“There was no sound to prepare us,

no noise of miracle,

no trumpet announcing the death of death,

or was it what we call life?

We did not understand and we ran from the empty tomb and then

He came to us in silence.

He did not explain

And at last I knew

That only in silence is the WORD.”

Thus Madeleine L’Engle, poet and author of “ A Wrinkle in Time," sums up that uniquely holy Easter Sunday morning.

The Word didn’t need fanfare. The WORD was free, wholly new, wholly true and real. The silent world of nature welcomed him, even before he and Mary Magdalen met.  Peter and John didn’t look for him in the silence. They left to go back to the world of noise and to puzzle out and try to explain to each other what had happened.  But Jesus, the Risen One waited in the garden, savoring all of creation, waiting until the breeze touched him, the fragrance of the garden did him homage, like the incense of the Magi so many years before.

He comes to us in silence today, wherever we are. Before he speaks or we speak, we absorb his Presence in silence. Alleuia! Amen! Happy Easter!

At the same time that we celebrate Easter, our thoughts keep going back to the stunning fire at Notre Dame Cathedral. So much was lost: history, the layers of prayer whispered or sung over the centuries. 800 years of memories. Already, the word is out that France will rebuild the cathedral. Money is pouring in. But more than that.  Think about the Easter Vigil. In churches all over the world, new fires were being lighted to remind us that God has been present to us throughout all of salvation history and is uniquely present to us today in the Risen Christ. Couched between these two events, we have cause to believe that  not only can this iconic church be rebuilt, but more importantly, the whole of the Church, cleansed by fire, can be rebuilt as well.

-Sister Joan Sobala