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Published on:

13th Apr 2020

Playing it forward. (Easter Monday)

Monday, April 13th, 2020

So Happy Easter to all of you!  But Father, you might say, you already did that yesterday.  And I respond to you - yes!  You are right. And I do it again today.  Because today also is Easter Sunday. Every day this week, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, is Easter Sunday.  It is called the Easter Octave - oct, for 8! Because Easter is so important for human history, and to us who love Jesus, that the Church feasts daily for eight days!  So feast merrily today, have some special foods, do some special things, and rejoice!

St Peter expands on our reasons for feasting today: Now raised to the heights by God’s right hand, he has received from the Father the Holy Spirit, who was promised, and what you see and hear is the outpouring of that Spirit.

In other words our feasting is not simply at something which happened a long time ago.  It is not even limited to the fact that Jesus is here risen and radiant at our side right now.  We are also feasting because of what Jesus is doing and will do for us now. Peter says Jesus has promised us, now he is risen, something which has never happened in human history since the fall of Adam and Eve: God is going to pour out on us the fullness of himself, his Holy Spirit.  This means the effect of the resurrection are not simply something that I understand, and I set my life around. Just as Jesus did what we could not in Holy Week, so now, as he taught us he can that week, the Holy Spirit is now going to do what we cannot for ourselves - from within our very heart and soul.  What we saw with our eyes in Holy Week, the Holy Spirit will do himself from within our hearts for eternity.

This of course is the Lord’s first redirection of our eyes towards the feast when he will accomplish this - the feast of Pentecost.  I invite you brothers and sisters, to begin preparing, simply by praying once a day the three words Veni Creator Spiritus: come creator Spirit, come rerecreate me, come liberate and heal me.  Amen.

Let us pray:

O God, who give constant increase

to your Church by new offspring,

grant that your servants may hold fast in their lives

to the Sacrament they have received in faith.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever.


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About the Podcast

The Furnace
The Furnace is a free brief daily homily podcast by a priest of the Emmanuel Community for the Archdiocese of Sydney. The aim of the podcast is to proclaim the love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the "glowing furnace of love" (St Gertrude the Great).
Why The Furnace? Quite simply because most people in Australia, and the
world, can no longer get to Mass, or even into a church. The point of these
podcasts is to bring people a share of the Mass in the Word of God and prayer.
But why the name? Because the Heart of Jesus is a “Furnace of love”. This
is how St Gertrude the Great describes it. As she prays:

O Sacred Heart of Jesus,
fountain of eternal life,
Your Heart is a glowing furnace of Love.
You are my refuge and my sanctuary.
O my adorable and loving Saviour,
consume my heart with the burning fire
with which Yours is aflamed.
Pour down on my soul those graces
which flow from Your love.
Let my heart be united with Yours.
Let my will be conformed to Yours in all things.
May Your Will be the rule of all my desires and actions.
Amen

The point of these homilies is first of all to share this with everyone - to
share the love of God’s heart with every human heart. There is nothing original
about that. This is, basically, all priests are ever trying to do. And it’s the only
real point of the Catholic Church: invented by Christ to share Christ, starting
from his pierced heart on the cross on Good Friday. It’s only fitting that at this
time each of us are being refitted with slightly larger crosses that our creator
comes to meet us from the cross with his own heart pierced and broken.

There is so much I could say about the Heart of Jesus - but I would have
to go on forever, because his Heart is infinite. So I’ll finish with the invitation of
another of the great saints of the Sacred Heart, St Claude la Colombiere:
May the Heart of Jesus Christ be our school! Let us make our abode there . . .

Let us study its movements and attempt to conform ours to them.
My friends, lets enter Jesus’ heart together.

It’s not just me recording it, or just you listening to a recording.

I rely on your prayers, and as I write and talk I am praying for each of you. And
in any case, there is no such thing as a Christian doing something by themselves:
like the Trinity, where one is, the others are. So let’s enter together, for Jesus is
standing in front of us now, with his heart wide open, to enter and experience
his love, his healing, his teaching, authentic freedom - and eternal life with him.