Minute Meditations

At the heart of the story on Easter Sunday is the empty tomb. Somewhere in the darkness of the Easter Vigil and the pale dawn of Easter Sunday, each of us must confront the empty tomb and discover for ourselves the Risen Christ.

Pope Francis reminds us that our joy in the Risen Christ calls us to a quiet love and service, wrapped in the awareness that our life in Christ needs no trumpets or pomp and earthly glory. We have a peace in our hearts that is stronger than death itself. All our hope lies in that promise.

—from the book The Hope of Lent: Daily Reflections from Pope Francis by Diane M. Houdek

Are you still striving, friend? Are you still running yourself ragged looking to have something to offer the Lord to make you worthy of him? Do you look around you and wonder how so many people seem to have gotten so much closer to him while you have been working so hard and still feel so far away? Here’s the good news for today, for you and me both. We can quit the striving and the working and the approval seeking. We can exhale and fill our lungs with the fresh air of acceptance, of appreciation, of being invited into full friendship with Christ. We can be content, satisfied, and grateful. And we don’t have to do a thing to earn it, to deserve it. We don’t need to jockey for position. All we have to do is look up and see him here, beckoning us nearer, and then choose to be drawn in by his loving gaze and tuned into his voice.

—from the book Who Does He Say You Are? Women Transformed by Christ in the Gospels by Colleen  Mitchell