Rest in peace our Santo Papa. Thank you Pope Francis🙏 (fb)

Easter Message from Fr Mark Nillo In the Philippines, many of us are familiar with the beautiful custom that takes place in the wee hours of Easter Sunday morning. Filipinos call it “Salubong” or, in English, “meeting,” which recalls the moment when Jesus meets his sorrowful and yet faithful mother immediately following his resurrection. The Salubong or Meeting takes place outdoors in the dark. The ritual starts with two separate processions that begin simultaneously from two different locations within the parish territory. A group of male parishioners follow an image of the Risen Christ. A group of female parishioners follow an image of the Sorrowful Mother whose face is covered with a grieving veil. The two groups process through the streets and, at the end of the procession, converge just outside the church’s front doors. A young girl dressed up as an angel of God comes up to the image of the Sorrowful Mother and lifts her grieving veil to reveal her face. The Sorrowful Mother and the Risen Christ finally see and meet each other again, face-to-face, for the first time, after his death on the cross. It is the reunion of Mother and Son, Son and Mother…The Reunion of all reunions. Following this beautiful and powerful ritual, the parishioners are greeted by the light of the dawn as they make their way into the church for the Easter Sunday morning Mass. The Risen Lord is alive and is here with us throughout the entire season of Easter. Let us encounter the Risen Lord in everything and in every person that gives us life, joy, and hope during this season. Let us encounter him in the places where he is most truly present: at Mass and at Adoration, as we hear his beautiful and inspiring words and as we contemplate and receive his life-giving self in the Eucharist. Let us allow the Risen Lord to remind us that he has defeated death. For those who believe in the Resurrection of the Body and Life Everlasting, there is no such thing as a permanent death. Death does not (and will not) have the final word for the followers of Jesus, who died and rose from the dead. Our Christian journey is not supposed to end with death. Rather, after we die, it must continue with great hope in Jesus’ promise of the Resurrection of the Body and Life Everlasting. For the faithful departed who had been dead for over two thousand years, and whose remains are still buried in the ground, their death seems like eternity. But remember that Christ will come back from Heaven at the appointed time to raise them up from the dead. By his power, the Lord will miraculously gather their bodily and cremated cremains, just like what our Almighty God did at the beginning of Creation when he formed man out of dust and breathed life into the dirt. God will fuse together the bodies and souls of the faithful departed. He will give them their physical bodies, similar to (but not exactly the same as) the glorified physical body of the Risen Christ. And then they will live with God in everlasting happiness, peace, and light.​ Beginning today, let us already live our lives here on earth, looking beyond our present sufferings, and seeing the victory that awaits us at the end. Happy Easter to us all! Remember that Easter Sunday is just 'Day 1' of the Easter Season in the Church’s calendar. We did not spend forty days of Lent just to celebrate in one day. Rather, we are meant to celebrate for fifty days during this Easter season! Thank you, Jesus, for rising from your own grave! Thanks be to God. Christ is risen! Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!!! (fb)