Easter celebration and our elderly

Dear editor: What would a good Easter Sunday mean to you at this time on your human journey? Many of us who were born before 1980 were baptized and it is good to reflect on what we can still do with that identity.

In 1993, here in Kelowna at the end of the first Mass on Easter Day, an elderly parishioner of deep and tried faith, from Eastern Europe, remarked to me that not hearing the hymn “Jesus Christ is Risen today,” was a huge disappointment for her. She departed for paradise soon after that Easter.

Today, I can see more clearly the value of asking people like that to share the hope of their souls with me. Her faith and hope had taken its shape around Easter Sunday.

Aging is not much talked about in Kelowna. It is a full-time job making ourselves function in a reasonably dignified manner. The absence of suffering is the nearest approach to happiness many have come to expect. How easy it is for festivity to vanish from our lives. Easter helps us more than any other festival to say yes to the Lord who, seven times over, proclaimed “happiness” on the Mount of the Beatitudes.

The first Easter gave its witnesses a deeper access to themselves and to the great desires hidden in their hearts. Faith in the Risen Lord got down into the depths of those who opened their hearts to him. Christians began to form communities, realizing that when united they had direct access to him; people sought their happiness in him and he fulfilled the great desires of their hearts. Those who died were accompanied to their graves by church members singing psalms and alleluia hymns declaring faith and joy in Christ’s gift of eternal life.

There are about 70 Christian churches in the North Okanagan and this is a special week for all of us. Easter is a day of hope for human dignity. In it, you will find that you are not your history — that you belong to the Risen Lord who has overcome all death and sin as we have experienced it. Come and listen to a great Alleluia rise up again in your soul. It is the song of the desert discovering life without end. Fr.Harry Clarke.

Kelowna