Fr. Todd 4/5/26 Bulletin Article

Dear Sacred Heart and St. Mary on the Lake,

                 Blessed Easter!  My encouragement this Easter is simply to live it.  Live the graces of this past Lent and live the freedom already given us by the Resurrection.  The promise of Easter isn’t just something far off, to be received only at the end of our earthly lives as we enter eternity.  We should see and enjoy the fruits of victory over death and sin right now.  Many little dying’s and being raised to new life leading up to the final one.

 A reading from this past Holy Week that I have been praying with is John 12:1-11.  Jesus returns to have dinner with Martha, Mary, and Lazarus after the miracle of raising Lazarus.  In this story two powerful things happen.  First, is an act of great love from Mary where she takes a liter of costly perfume and anoints Jesus’ feet.  John tells us that the entire house is filled with the fragrance of that oil.  That is a powerful image to understand one aspect of how Easter is lived out in us.  We have to realize that the life of the Holy Spirit in us is never kept secret.  As we open ourselves up to grace, it will flow out into our lives into acts of love.  The fragrance of those acts will spread out.  That day everyone who entered Martha, Mary, and Lazarus’ house would have smelled that perfume and rightfully asked where it was coming from.  There is always a lingering effect to the life of grace in us that will cause others to pause in the best of ways.  Upon investigating further to its cause, the explanation will always point back to Jesus and what He has done in us and for us.  As St. Paul will later say, we as Christians should have the odor of Christ.

 The second point that has captivated me is the verse where John tells us that many people were coming to the house to see Lazarus because he had been raised from the dead.  This is a pattern that should define our lives as Christians.  Now and again throughout our lives people should come to see us because we have been raised from the dead.  I have noticed that you used to be this way (fill in the blank for a particular habit, struggle, publicly known sinful pattern) and now you are not.  There are many examples that can be filled in here- many of our Lents will have included some of these habits where we have experienced a death and new life.  For some, Lent is that time that a pattern of negative and cutting speech finally died and Easter is lived with being able to speak in a whole different way.  For others it is killing a particular attachment to the phone that isolated them from the people around them.  Easter is lived being able to be present again in a greater way.  For others it was a pattern of spiritual sloth that was put to death.  Mass attendance had been irregular at best and Easter is lived in renewed relationship.

Now and again, we should see the Lazarus effect in our own lives where others come and see us and ask: “What happened?”.  I needed to see you because you used to be this way and you are not anymore.  Right along with that is usually a desire to be so healed themselves.

Let us live this Easter!  May we see how our life with God is a fragrance that can fill the world around us.  May we see how every small death and resurrection can bring others closer to the Lord.

God Bless,  Fr. Todd