Daily Scriptures Reflection for 5/17/12

Scripture: Lectionary 294, May 17. Acts 18:1-8. Psalm 98:1.2-3.3-4. John 16:16-20:

Grief is turned into joy by the Resurrection of Jesus. He has promised this during his active ministry and now we celebrate during this Easter Season the fulfillment of that promise. It is the most hopeful spiritual reality that gives us a share in the eternal life that Jesus has at the right hand of the Father. We already have a foretaste of this in the love we experience from Jesus and from the faith community and family we belong to.

Jesus is speaking of leaving for a little while in this last discourse to his apostles on the day before he was crucified. His return on the third day has for us been realized and we know the entire story that the Gospels give us and more particularly during this Easter Season we have the perspective of the last Gospel of John as our liturgical reading for these days prior to Pentecost.

Daily we have the opportunity of entering into the Mysteries of Christ through the Eucharist and the Word of God read and proclaimed. We daily pass through the Paschal Mysteries and thus understand the “little period” in which Jesus speaks to us about in today’s Gospel passage. He is always with us, but the mystery of his suffering, death, and resurrection are recalled and activated for us through the sacrament of the Eucharist. We break open the Scriptures and then share in the sacred presence of Jesus through the elements of bread and wine given to us at the table of the Lord.

In the liturgy we are in contemplative and prayerful time called “Kairos” where there is more the event and experience of the Word rather than a keeping of time in the ordinary way. The word used for that is “Chronos” from which we have chronological reckoning of time.

Kairos keeps us from looking at our watches! Even during the homily!! Easter is the season in which love, joy and peace are given to us. We now await the coming of the Holy Spirit who will bring to fulfillment all that Jesus has promised us and told us in his discourses and parables. Let us rejoice that Jesus had told us that our grief has been turned into joy. Amen. Alleluia.