Our Ministries
22 Apr

Second Sunday of Easter

Hello Relatives

How do we sustain Easter joy and belief beyond one weekend? Our readings are filled with images of fear and images of healing. Locked doors! Fear! Doubt! Peace! Touching wounds! Mercy! Healing! Breath! The Holy Spirit! How often do we place ourselves behind locked doors? We act out of fear and a search for security. Locked doors are our defenses, barricades between us as persons.

I am thinking about all the times I have experienced a freedom from fear, times when I have seen, heard, and/or touched the wounds of persons who are “behind closed doors” or fearful for their lives, their security, their reputation. Like Thomas, I needed to know, I needed to feel, I needed to experience the wounds of someone I loved and cared about. The first time someone “came out” to me as gay. The first time I realized that the color of my skin, or the first time being a “Sister” gave me privileges others did not have. My current experiences with our black Sisters and Brothers at Macedonia Baptist Church on the West Side of San Antonio. It takes relationships, a recognition that we are all human beings, created in the image and likeness of God to “touch and be touched” by such experiences. By virtue of being created by God, we are all related! So my greeting to others, even when they are very different from me, might always be, “Hello, Relatives.” I heard that salutation from Father Brian Massingale and ever since then, it works for me. Try it!

Jesus’s desire for us is to not be afraid. Jesus greets us with “Peace be with you!” A prayer suggestion: Use these or similar words. “From (name something such as fear or envy or bitterness) release me, Lord. Fill me with your Spirit of peace.” Use your hands beginning with clenched fists when you name your fear or something that binds you. When you pray for peace, open your hands. Jesus used breath in his pouring out of the Spirit on those gathered in that closed room. It reminds us of how God breathed life into God’s creation of the first human beings. May the breath of the Spirit continue to bring new life—Easter joy that is lived in our thoughts, words, and actions. May it be so!

 Be Believing
by Tamara Hill Murphy, Texas
http://blog.thissacramentallife.com/2016/04/practice-resurrection-be-believing.html

Later on
that day / the dark room
was enough
to concoct buttoned down,
in our minds.

While we lingered bolted-in,
shut-up / You
breezed past barricade as One
hole-pocked / exhaled
absolution, a hot gust
peace be with you;
materialized new –
as Yourself / awake & alive
after the woman’s claim
you spoke her name.

afraid / our fingers
traced your split side
‘til we inhaled
Your closer breathing,
our truer air.

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