HAPPY EASTER!

Easter continues-let’s not turn the page too quickly! We are given an octave, eight special days and a full forty-day Easter season until Pentecost (which we celebrate on May 23). “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, Therefore, let us keep the feast,” (from first part of the Pascha Nostrum, the initial song of praise in the Anglican Rite for Easter Day in the 1549 Book of Common Prayer, still in use today).
 
In this Sunday’s second reading (John 1:5), it is revealed that “God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.” Easter is all about Divine light, to which we are drawn, in which we are called to live, which we are called and empowered to share.
 
This Easter Sunday, April 4, we marked the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., at age 39, a seeker of the light. He famously declared that “darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.” Despite personal or public struggles, he did not relent, because he trusted in the never-failing presence of God, Who “is light.”
 
Let us, therefore, “walk as children of light” (Ephesians 5:8), knowing that, as the Dutch theologian, Erasmus (+1536), says, if we “give light, the darkness will disappear of itself.” This requires, however, a daily choice on our part, especially in our current context of acute societal sensitivity. Let us “give light”, refraining from hasty judgment and from adding to harsh discourse. “Words which do not increase the light of Christ increase the darkness,” 

Mother Teresa tells us. Let us GIVE light…

Yours in the light of Christ,

The Rev. Dominique Peridans
Friend-in-Christ