Each year (and actually every Sunday) at Eastertime we are called to refocus our faith on the Great promise of Easter and now we have the fifty (50) days of the Easter Season to really “buy-into” the Promise of Christ and see how we can redirect our daily lives to reflect the love, the compassion and the mercy of God in-and-through the Domestic Church—our families—for it is the family where the Church truly celebrates the “Mass” and the entirety of our faith.

The Great Easter Promise is realized in the passion, death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn* the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” (John 3:16-18)

It is in the passion, death and Resurrection that we are told that through the suffering servant Jesus Christ, He will take on the sins of the guilty and carry them on His shoulders, and in His spilling of His blood and handing over of His body, our sinfulness will be wiped away and our very beings will be made like Christ Himself after His Resurrection. As we have celebrated the Stations of the Cross each Friday in the church, at the Crucifixion Station, we read in the prayer this question: Is my soul worth this much? That Jesus would be nailed to the Cross and suffer such pain and humiliation for my soul—with all my “betrayals” or sins against God: my sins of commission—the lies, the cheating, the unfaithfulness and more to the sins of omission—the indifference that enters into my daily life and causes me to look away from one’s needs and focus on the conveniences of life. I am really worth the pain and suffering of Good Friday?

To God the answer is a resounding YES! “For God so loved the world…” and in that love He continues to desire us, for God is immutable—unable to change—since He is Who He Is, or as the Church declares, “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen!” This God’s promise of Easter—God who IS Love. In the greatness of God’s love we have the Sacrament of Reconciliation which best illustrates the Father’s love for us: that is, especially in the midst of our betrayals and sins, God then desires even more to forgive us—granting us absolution in the Sacrament—so that He can forgive us, love us and call us back to Him once again. When it comes to our sinning, God does not look through us and to the past, holding us to our old sinful ways reminding us time and time again of our failings, but rather He looks at us and to the future—that with His grace and our contrition—to what we can become in His image and likeness. This is the Promise of Easter. A renewal of life everlasting.

As we enter into the Easter Season and prepare ourselves for the birthday of the Church, Pentecost, let us use this time of joy to reconnect to our faith, to deepen it in our daily activities of life, and become a new example of His Love in our families, our communities and our world. That will be a wonderful way for us to answer the question of this column: Is My Soul Worth This Much? Yes! It is, or at least it can be…the choice and the power is ours to make. May it be a happy and blessed Easter—and beyond!