A mother of 5 spoke to me this past week about the need for everyone to be more in touch with the reality of God’s love and spending less time online. She talked about her and her children’s constant battle with distractions of all sorts and put her finger on technology as making it more difficult to stay in touch with what is real and healthier.
As a younger religious I’m grateful for 2 things this Easter. One, that I have the privilege of being able to relate and enter into the emptiness of upcoming generations. And, two, that Christ has risen in a way that calls us all to get excited about facing a new reality of health, healing and hope. Perhaps it is the hunger for these very things that drive us all to distractions that ultimately leave us isolated, empty and broken? In any case, I, like Mary Magdalene and the other disciples choose to run to the emptiness of any tomb in my restless heart that has death and despair in it so that I can be in touch with my own reality and invite Christ risen from the dead into it. I always seem to feel more free when I do this and more in touch with my responsibility to deal with what I lack and what Jesus’ resurrected presence means for us all. May God bless us this Easter with the courage to model what it means to live in the reality of our brokenness so that in the face of despair the narrative that begins with an empty tomb may become more real and transformative for everyone.
Photo and reflection by: Toby Collins, CR – a Resurrectionist who ministers with two other Resurrectionists at St. Mary’s Parish in downtown Kitchener, Ontario.
