Readings:
James 5:13-20
Mk 10:13-16
Reflection:
Finally, after seven weeks, Easter is over.One of my favourite book titles is a book on spirituality called “After the Ecstasy comes the Laundry”. Feasts are wonderful, but it is in the dailiness of life that grace actually lets us see the beauty in the ordinary, the everyday, the down-to-earth.Jesus put his arms around the children and held them, we are told today. (As an aside, he would not get away with that in any of our churches or schools today!). Yet what Easter has been trying to tell us is that there is never a moment, ever, when we NOT being held in the arms of Jesus. Of course, most often we don’t have the luxury of stopping everything to luxuriate in the experience. Someone has to do the laundry. So, we have save that ‘savouring’, ‘treasuring’ for some moments of quiet -if and when, in our busy lives, we can snatch such a moment. ( And that’s becoming increasingly rare). Perhaps the end of the day, unless that’s when we actually do have to do the family laundry. Or at Sunday mass – if you don’t have to take the kids to sport, or look after the grandkids.Aware or unaware, Jesus is, has been and always will be holding us each and every moment. So perhaps, at the next traffic lights when you stop, take a deep breath and say “Thank You, Lord”, -before you hit the horn to get the car ahead to move.
Fr Tom McDonough CP the Parish Priest and Community Leader at St.Paul’s, Glen Osmond, SA