What is resurrection?
What do we mean when we say that Jesus rose from the
dead,
and what does it mean to say
that we will be raised on the last
day?
For the early disciples
it had to have been both difficult and
inspiring
to be caught up in the day-to-day experience
of Jesus as their
teacher and friend,
only to see him killed
and then, within a few days of
his death,
to begin, one after another,
to experience him as alive in
their lives.
That’s what we remember as the resurrection—
their
experience, and the resulting conviction,
that the Spirit of the Messiah—the
Christ—the Anointed—
lived in each of them
and among them whenever they
gathered.
Hearing the “good news” of Jesus’ life, and death, and
resurrection
in and among them
brought even more followers to his
Way.
Followers like us.
We follow the Way of Jesus as best we
can,
loving God and our neighbors with all our being
and trying to walk
strong in peaceful non-violence.
Like our forebears in faith,
we too
experience the Divine Presence among us—
the risen Christ—
and the peace
that surpasses
understanding.
_______________________________________
Today we remember
Jesus
as the unique expression of the Divine Presence
And we remember each
of our loved ones—
our family, our friends—
as unique expressions of the
Divine Presence.
Our ancestors in faith, those first followers of the
Way,
had to study their scriptures
to fit their new experience into their
tradition.
So too, today we read from Paul’s letter to the Romans
and we
also have to peel away
the ancient cosmology and the atonement
theology
until we find
that it’s the love of God
poured into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit
and
that we’re reconciled to God
because we
follow the Way of Jesus.
It’s the same with John’s Gospel:
we have to peel
back the Johannine cosmology
that sees God as “out there” somewhere,
sent
to save us because we’re a sinful people
incapable of making any restitution
to an angry God.
Once we look through the lens of present-day
cosmology,
we see that we’re living a new story
that knows a universe
bigger than ever,
and the science of the Cosmic Hatch
and the Higgs
boson
and string theory
so that the concept of God as the ground of our
being
takes on wider and deeper meaning than ever before.
Brain theory is
expanding, too,
and the power of prayer has been proved,
even when the
people we pray for
don’t even know that we’re praying for them.
When we
take a look at the scriptures with our modern eyes,
we can recognize the
experience of those early Christians
as they prayed together
and
encountered the risen Christ in one another,
among family and friends,
and
in strangers on the road.
Many of us have had experiences
of loved ones
among us after they died,
experiences that we can’t explain
but that we
understand as real and holy.
When we gather and read the scriptures and break
the bread,
we experience ourselves as the body of Christ,
individually and
collectively.
The abiding presence of the risen Christ
remains in each and
every part of us
and in all of us together as God’s
people.
_______________________________________
Today we gather to
remember.
We walk the way, confident that it’s the right path.
The kin-dom
of God is at hand.
It’s a mystical experience,
with all the communion of
saints here in this chapel with us—
those who have gone before,
those who
are with us now,
and those who are yet to come.
We are all one in God and
God in us.
Our brother Jesus has shown us the way,
and he is with
us;
we are his body.
It’s a companionship of empowerment,
as Diarmuid
O’Murchu calls it.
We are all one,
and we will always be part of the
journey, on the Way,
one with the One God of All That
Is.
_______________________________________
So we remember.
We remember
the named and nameless people
who have gone before us,
and the known
friends and unknown strangers
who are with us around the globe today.
We
ask their prayers, and we pray for them.
The book of Wisdom tells us
“The
souls of the just are in the hand of God.”
They remain with us.
Our
saints.
No one is rejected.
No one is lost.
We stand together in the
kin-dom of God;
we are companions on the journey,
empowered and empowering
one another,
on the Way.
We now pray especially for them, with them, and
to them:
Litany of Our Saints
Jim Aust
Elizabeth
Dwaihy-Barr
Lloyd & Martha Bardus
Cletus & Marie Bingle
Bill
& Anne Bingle
Trudy Klear Bogue
All you holy men and women, pray for
us!
Lois & Jack Daly
Marshall Desmond
Marshall & Agnes
Desmond
Megan Desmond
Bob Donnelly
Bill Eggleston
All you holy men
and women, pray for us!
Paul Ewing
Phil & Jane Flis
Kern
Geoffrion
Ila Geoffrion
Baby Geoffrion
Susan Geoffrion
Mark
Geoffrion
All you holy men and women, pray for us!
Bill
Gillespie
The Gillespie Family
Aunt Lottie Gillespie
Marie & Joe
Grogan
Susan Grogan
Maureen Grogan
Deceased members of the Haverbusch
Family
Sheila Heiman
All you holy men and women, pray for us!
Ken
Holland
Ruth Houk
Jake Howell
Conrad & Sarah Hughes
Grace &
Paul Joyce
Departed members of the Joyce and Glover Families
All you holy
men and women, pray for us!
Michelle Kelsey
Antoine Madden
John
& Mary Mandula
Carole Mandula
Margaret McCarty
Ann McCrory
All
you holy men and women, pray for us!
Jack Mermer
Heidi
Mermer
William & Saloma Molony
Patty Montegno
Colleene Riddle
Palicki
Jay Peace
Susan Massari Prendergast
All you holy men and women,
pray for us!
Filomena & Felix Rosa
Dutch & Eleanor Stocklen
and Members of the Extended Stocklen Family
Dorothy VanAsdale
Diana
Wilburn
Maureen Williams
All you holy men and women, pray for
us!
Amen.
--
Holy Spirit Catholic Community
at 3535
Executive Parkway (Unity of Toledo)
Saturdays at 4:30 p.m.
Sundays at 5:30
p.m.
www.holyspirittoledo.org
Rev. Dr. Bev Bingle,
Pastor
419-727-1774
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