Easter a Day of Spiritual Joy

      Easter should be a day of spiritual joy, a day for celebration of the resurrection of spirit, a day in which spiritual considerations should be more prominent. Any secular or civil activities that interfere with pure spiritual observance of that day should be discouraged. Jesus Christ announced the important truth that the glory of his resurrection was the fruit of his Passion--I mean the accidental glory incident to his humanity, not the essential glory inherent in his divinity. While two of his disciples were going from Jerusalem to Emmaus, discoursing in the crucifixion, Jesus, in the guise of a stranger, joined them, and they said to him: "We had hoped that Christ would redeem Israel from gentile bondage and would reestablish the kingdom of a grander scale and rule as a conqueror. But our hopes are shaken, for he died a shameful death on the cross." And Jesus said to them: "Foolish and slow of heart to believe in all things which the prophets have spoken. Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and so enter into his glory?" If he had not trod the path of suffering and humiliation he would not be the Messiah foretold by the prophets. Cardinal Gibbons

"The Emmaus Road" by Steve Green

Heaven - Not Far Away.

Oh, heaven is nearer than mortal's think,

When they look with trembling dread,

At the misty future that stretches on,

From the silent home of the dead.

The eye that shuts in a dying hour,

Will open the next in bliss,

The welcome will sound in the heavenly world

Ere the farewell is hushed in this.

We pass from the clasp of mourning friends,

To the arms of the loved and lost;

And those smiling faces will greet us there,

Which on earth we have valued most.

Yet oft in the hours of holy thought,

To the thirsting soul is given,

That power to pierce through the mist of sense,

To the beauteous scenes of heaven.

I know when the silver cord is loosed,

When the vail is rent away,

Not long and dark shall the passage be,

To the realm of endless day.