April 18, 2023, Class Update: Celebrating 50 Days of Easter

Easter Greetings everyone!

Celebrating the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is a glorious occasion on Easter Sunday.

And we celebrate it for the 50 Days of the Easter Season, which begins on Easter Sunday and ends on Pentecost Sunday, which is May 28 this year.

During class, we focused on the meaning of Easter and the Resurrection.

As baptized people, we join with Christ in dying and rising to new life, and we experience this in our own lives.  I shared examples of seeing this Easter reality in my recent road trip to the Missouri River Valley between Iowa and Nebraska.

During class, the activity was creating colleagues of the imagery of the Exultet, the chant proclaimed at the start of the Holy Saturday Easter Vigil Mass.  This link contains the full text of it if you'd like to refer to it.

There is no submission for this week's activity: Instead, keep your collage in some spot where you'll see it often to remind yourself of the glorious triumph of Christ in the Resurrection.

The big idea about the Resurrection is that once we encounter the Risen Christ, we're called to go forth and share the news, which constantly happens in the Gospel accounts of the post-Resurrection appearances of Christ.

We share this news with our words and how we live our lives.  As we reach the conclusion of the RE year, the plan in our final class is to focus on how we live out our faith in the Risen Lord.

As usual, please feel free to contact me with questions, etc.

I pray that your week is blessed by joyful encounters with the Risen Christ and opportunities to share that joy with others.

We remain connected as One Church by faith in the Death and Resurrection of Christ:
All my relations,
Paul

P.S. Our opening prayer was the song "Alive", by Natalie Grant, which focuses on the Resurrection story through the perspective of St. Mary Magdalene, among the first to witness the evidence of the Resurrection.

During our activity time, I also played the song "All Things New" by Steven Curtis Chapman: we are made new in the Resurrection.

Inside Ascension Church, adorned with flowers and Easter decorations, which will be up until May 28, Pentecost Sunday


My recent extended weekend road trip was an opportunity for me to reconnect with the St. Augustine Indian Mission, where I had an impactful service trip experience 10 years ago last month.

This past Tuesday, April 18, they dedicated a new school.  Here's a short news report about the dedication.

And here are some photos from my trip that speak to the spirit of the Easter celebration of these 50 days.


St. Patrick Church in Iowa City was heavily damaged by a tornado on April 13, 2006.  The Sacred Heart of Jesus statue, appearing below, was pulled from the rubble.  Now, the Church is in a beautiful worship space that was dedicated in November 2009.


Flowers and Easter decorations adorn the altar of the Cathedral of St. Cecilia in Omaha, NE.

Flowers and Easter deorecations adorn the St. Augustine Church in Winnebago, NE.

Befitting the spirit of Easter, and new life, St. Augustine Mission dedicated a new school building on April 18.

Flowers and Easter decorations adorn the Cathedral of the Epiphany in Sioux City, IA.

Indeed, these flowers and other decorations symbolize the joy that accompanies the newness of Life that is within us through the Resurrection of Christ.

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