livingtheword

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Reflection Questions

1. St Augustine has famously called the Easter Vigil ‘The Mother of All Feasts’. This special night gives us signs, symbols, words, gestures which are at the heart of our Catholic Christian faith and identity. Every Sunday celebration flows from this Easter Celebration.
2. We gather in the dark of night. Darkness symbolising an absence of light, an unclear path to walk. Gathering around the light of a fire. Like people of ancient times have gathered and talked. We remember the pillar of fire that led God’s family through the desert journey. From this fire we light the Easter Candle the symbol of Christ. Our true ‘light’. It is normal to turn a light-switch and ‘see’. Can you locate an experience of darkness, feeling lost, uncertain of where and how to walk? And the joy of a ‘light’ to guide you? This dark / light reality is important to let enter your religious imagination this night.
3. The foundational story of our beginnings and the divine statement 6 times of creation being ‘very good’ is deeply important. Despite the chaos of history, pollution, violence, can you look deeply into life and see ‘goodness’ and the ‘beauty of men and women in the ‘image of God’? How might this foundational attitude of goodness and thank-full-ness toward life cause you to live?
4. Lights turn on and bells ring at the reading of the New Testament. Why?
5. St Paul teaches us about baptism and the renewal of our baptismal promises made at the Easter Vigil. Our baptism actually involved us into Jesus’ death. We were ‘buried’. Our baptism calls us into ‘a death like his’. Our ‘old self’ of selfishness and sin has and is being crucified and ‘put to death’. Christ’s rising is also our future rising. Consider Paul’s words personally: ‘you must think of yourselves as being dead to sin and living for God in Christ’. What do these words teach you about your baptism?
6. The Resurrection continues from the crucifixion scene with ‘end time events’ being seen: earthquakes, angels, people shaking with fear. Matthew wants us to recognise a truly cosmic event is taking place. A tomb, a place of death is now empty. What does this mean? Jesus has been raised from the dead. What does this mean? As we profess our belief in the ressurection of our bodies, is this merely present as an idea in your head stored up for when you die, or a reality that takes away fear and profoundly influences your living ‘now’?
7. Jesus calls his disciples ‘brothers’ not hopeless losers who abandoned him. We are ‘family’ to Jesus. No matter how Lent went, enjoy Easter!
8. What is one action that you will do to ‘livetheword’ this week?