As we celebrate the 50 days of the Easter Season in our Parish, we are each called to continue on as Christ’s Disciples in the ways we freely choose to live-out our Christian faith in our daily activities of life. The Lenten Season was the time in which we hopefully acted to well form our practices of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, so as to be more “perfect” Christian disciples living out our faith in-and-through the ways we fuse our faith into our families, work and social ethics.

My Good Friday homily asked us to consider the question posed by the 11th Station of the Cross: “Is my soul worth this much?” as we considered Christ suffering for us by being nailed to the Cross and enduring the humiliation and scourging. God answered that question
with a resounding “YES” in His act of sending the Christ, His Only Son, into the world and to save us from unending death as the innocent Lamb. In the Crucifixion, death and Resurrection of Jesus we are justified by God, as Saint Paul tells us in the Letter to the Romans, for Jesus is the destroyer of the power of Sin (note “S” versus “s”) offered as God’s great gift of Eternal
Life to all who choose to believe in Him. Saint Paul distinguishes between “sins” as in our personal sins of lying, cheating, infidelity, indifference and the like versus the power of “Sin” which is a cosmic force under which we all are held (Good versus evil).

This power of Sin—evil, the devil—can control us unless a greater power, the Righteous One, comes and we choose to follow Him—the Christ. Paul wishes us to understand this cosmic force of Sin, which is wiped away in Baptism by God’s gift of grace, as a power that is in the world and adds to the knowledge that our choices are swayed by an evil that calls us to choose selfishness, self-indulgence; a choice to turn from God and turn inwardly. From this early writing of Saint Paul, Saint Augustine develops his and the Church’s understanding of Original Sin.

“Believing” in Christ requires us to do “something.” And this something is to act, in various
ways, which leads us to live out our faith in the world around us. Remember a few months ago a mantra in the homilies: Believe It. Live It. Share It. We must ask ourselves just how we putting the Beatitudes (see the sanctuary walls) into living practice. How do we instill in our work, our families—the Domestic Church, in our interactions with others the Church’s teachings on the
corporal and spiritual works of mercy as taught by Christ and His Church? For to believe is to live.

This past weekend I mentioned at the Masses that our director of youth ministry Judy Pluta shared with me a story about one of her former youth ministry team leaders now at college in Boston. Dan Peluso lobbied his fraternity brothers to join him on certain Saturday mornings at Pilgrim Church in the City and minister at a shelter. Dan, formed first by his family and community of faith and then by the opportunities offered by our youth ministry cultivated an already natural belief in himself to transform that belief into action. This simple yet most powerful act of “one” calling others with him into action is truly the meaning of the Easter Resurrection. For why did Christ suffer, die and rise again? Not for us to be believers in mind only—for that is but the first
step—but rather to put that belief into faith-action. Remember the wise words of Father Terry Kristofak, C.P., “change is inevitable, growth is the option.” Indeed, as we choose to walk with Jesus during this Blessed Easter Season, may we choose growth-in-our-faith and help to
build the Church by continuing the mission and ministry of Jesus Christ. Now is our turn to Walk With Jesus!