Celebrate the Resurrection with Sincerity and Truth

My dear brothers and sisters, he is risen! Alleluia!

It feels so good to say that, doesn’t it? If so, that sounds like Lent did its job. Or perhaps more to the point, that you did your part to lean into Lent, so as to be more able to celebrate our great feast now upon us, the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. As our new parish mission proclaims, life — and certainly the Christian life — is a made up of different times and different phases, if you will. As Scripture says,


Can you guess which time Lent is? I don’t know about you, but mine kind of felt like a lot of dying. Certainly of dying to self. And that’s good if it feels like that, even if it hurts — but just for a time. As St. Paul says today:


We have died in Christ, and Lent is a time for further embracing that dying to self, dying to sin, and doing some spiritual spring cleaning so that God can better fill us with his grace. Lent is also a training ground when we grow in virtue, for which penance and self-denial can be particularly useful. But just like in athletics, we don’t just train. We’re working toward something. And that something is here. St. Paul, again, says today:


Indeed, we have now completed another round of the preparing part of our mission, and now can enjoy the great Easter celebration. But just as our Lenten preparations took on a very specific tone and tenor, namely of penance, prayerfulness, and charity, so our Easter celebrating should be a joyful expression of the what we’re actually celebrating: the incredible fact that God became man, died for our sins, and rose from the dead so that we may partake in his divine life. And not just at some far off point in the future, mind you. Here and now. Yes, at Nativity of Our Lord, in the Mac-Groveland neighborhood, in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA.

So rejoice with me! And let us celebrate together today, as well as the rest of the week (the Easter octave) and for the full 50 days of the Easter season. For he is risen indeed, as he said. Alleluia!

Fr. Rolf Tollefson, Pastor of Nativity of Our Lord