Easter Sunday is the most exciting Sunday of the Church year. Just look at the disciples Peter and John. The mere suggestion of Mary of Magdala that something has happened at the tomb of Jesus sets them running toward the tomb.
According to most biblical scholars, the account of the passion and death of Jesus constitutes the earliest strata of ordered traditions concerning Jesus. It was surely the most severe test of Jesus’s followers in interpreting his death.
Sometimes our observance of Lent can be disappointing. We began with hope of “turning to the Lord,” but ended up living life as usual. Maybe the best remedy is to experience Lent as a time of God’s activity, not our own activity. This is Isaiah’s perspective in the first reading.
Most of us like to take out the family album and thumb through its pages; the pictures stir up feelings. The first and second readings from the Lectionary do the same. Both tell us about our beginnings, when Israel escaped Egyptian enslavement, and set out for Canaan having been chosen as the Lord’s own people.