Easter Message

This is from the CEO at Ken's company. I used to babysit for their kids - and they are some of the sweetest, most helpful and loving kids I've ever met. I'd love to have a family like them someday.

How great is this?!


Easter Message from Bryan
March 22, 2008

This week we observe the Christian Holy week leading us to Easter Sunday and the celebration
of the risen Christ. For me and for my family, this is the most special holiday celebration of the
liturgical year, even more so than Christmas.

Each year Maria and I look for a virtue for Lent to try and get our kids focused on something to
unite them with the suffering of Jesus on the cross. This year we selected Mercy as the virtue.
As has become a sort of tradition with our older children, we watch the Passion of the Christ, and
while there is so much to be taken away from the director’s portrayal of Jesus’ suffering and
death; we were moved especially this year by the scene where Mary comes to Christ on the way
of the cross. While not scriptural based, the writers have Jesus saying to Mary “Look Mother,
how I make all things new”. How ironic that scene appears. Here is Jesus, tortured, coved in
blood, horribly disfigured and yet this was the Plan to make “all things new” again. To fix what
had gone horribly wrong since the first sin.

When we discuss the virtue of mercy with our kids they immediately explain that showing mercy to someone is to forgive them for whatever wrong they have done to you. Perhaps to most mercy and forgiveness are one in the same; yet it seems to me like mercy has to precede forgiveness.

If we do not have a merciful disposition then forgiveness becomes more akin forgetfulness;
meaning we lack the specific intension to release or erase the wrongful act committed against us,
instead we just chose not to dwell on it. Yet it is important to be merciful and to forgive others
even if the transgressor is not sorry for their having harmed us in the first place. Hanging on to
that wrong, even if forgotten for a short while, will eventually be remembered and eat away at us and do us emotional and spiritual harm. It is from these emotions that more sin is perpetuated; for example vengeance; the need to feel as if we are getting even. How many times do you see an NFL player get called for unsportsmanship conduct when he is retaliating against a guy who shoved him? Yet it’s the second guy the referee sees and calls the penalty on. We certainly see this in our children as they try and get even with one another. It drives Maria and me crazy. Why is this lesson so hard for us to figure out?

Why was it that Jesus, the son of God, had to suffer so much in order to redeem us of our
iniquities? I’ve heard and read many differing “scholarly” opinions about the purpose behind the
Passion, but I think it boils down to balance. Think of the scale Lady Justice holds; there was just
so much sin in the world, the only way to balance it out was with the weight of the cross and
Jesus’ supernatural suffering. And what a merciful God we have to take that weight upon Himself to pay that ransom for our eternal lives: to balance the scale.

This abundant mercy lives on in the Church today through the sacrament of reconciliation. We
can balance the scales of our own sin through confession, the act of contrition and penance. It is
the perfection of God plan to recognize that we sin by our own darkened nature and accordingly
we will need a way to make ourselves “new” again. Not that the act of forgiveness makes the sin
stay away. We live under constant attack from evil. We invite it into our homes in the form of
cable TV and the internet. We live with danger from addictive behaviors such as gambling, drugs
and alcohol and sex. Elliot Spitzer’s downfall can attest that all people are subject to temptation
and in our own arrogance we feel we can control the addiction when it is the addiction that
controls us; with ruinous consequences.

The recent debate about race in the presidential campaign is another current event in the news
that shows the need for mercy in order to receive the grace of healing. The media sound bites of
Reverend Wright’s comments about the division of color in America offers an example of why we
need to get past the history of hate in this country. Can anyone honesty deny there have been
terrible offenses against black American’s and many other ethnic minorities in this country? Of
course not, but when we dwell on the hate we become mired in it and unable to move past it
towards a brighter future. Instead the hate consumes us and holds us hostage to a bitter
existence. But once again forgiveness is not the same as forgetfulness. We can not forget or
erase the past. The long-standing policy of segregation and discrimination that pervaded this
country for decades must be remembered so that we may never again repeat these offenses.
But with forgiveness comes healing and with healing the ability move forward.