EASTER AND PASSOVER BLESSINGS AT THIS INCOMPARABLE TIME OF YEAR

3/30/18

I haven’t been writing much of late, but I sent this Easter greeting to friends and regular readers.   I’d like to share it with all of my readers.

I’ll try to start writing more often after Easter.

Thanks, and blessed Triduum, Passover, and Easter to all of you.

BLESSED TRIDUUM, EASTER, AND PASSOVER FROM QUINN

3/29/18, Holy Thursday

I had lunch with an old and dear friend yesterday.   When we concluded our usual conversation about things that matter, he asked if I was going to send out my annual Easter greeting.   Since I haven’t written much of late, I wasn’t going to put together a customary Easter message; however, since I was asked by someone whose opinions and friendship mean so much to me, I decided that the annual greeting would not take a hiatus in 2018.

I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours or so trying to come up with something profound to say about this time of year, but it became obvious to me at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper this evening that there is no profundity that could come remotely close to doing justice to the events we celebrate over these next days.    God, the creator of the universe, became man, a man of humble means and circumstances.   He taught us all how to live, ever knowing what lay before Him.   He shared His final Seder with His friends and gave us His body and blood as our spiritual food.   He died an indescribably painful and shameful death, a death that only the most evil, sadistic, and twisted minds of Rome could devise, a death reserved for the most despicable and loathsome people in the empire.  Then, after taking the incessant abuse of the authorities and the crowds while enduring excruciating pain and an ignominious death for the very people who were ridiculing Him, He rose from the dead so that we could all have a path to life.   And He didn’t have to do any of it; He could have simply decreed from His heavenly throne that all our sins, all our offenses to Him, to our brothers and sisters, and to ourselves be wiped away by Divine decree and that the gates of heaven be opened to all of us.   But He gladly did what He did, He suffered as He suffered, and rose as He rose because He loved all of us and wanted us to know how much He loved us.   What words can do such love justice?

Blessed Triduum, Easter, and Passover, my friends.   God bless you all.

Mark