PASTOR DAVE’S MUSINGS FROM THE HEARTLAND

May 8, 2024

LOVE INCARNATE

                Easter this year was the first one since Diane and I visited Vatican City last July.  We stood in front of St. Peter’s Basilica where the people gathered for Easter mass.  We toured St. Peter’s where several of the Holy Week services took place.  We visited the Sistine Chapel where Pope Benedict XVI was selected.

This April I watched the Holy Week services from the Vatican with a new sense of interest.  Since I had visited a number of the places where the events took place, several times I mentioned to Diane, “Remember when we were there.”  Last year’s visit to Italy gave the services new meaning.

I had a similar experience as I watched the events surrounding the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middelton.  Diane and I had attended vesper services at Westminster Abbey.  As we watched the bride walk down the aisle, we tried to find the pew in which we had sat.  We had watched the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.  We had walked the grounds of the park where many had camped out in anticipation of the wedding.

Personal observations of the settings for the Holy Week services at the Vatican and the wedding Prince William and Kate Middelton helped to make both events more personally significant and increased my understanding and appreciation of what I was watching.

The three times I have visited the Holy Lands have helped me to make the life, death, and resurrection come alive in a special way.  Being where history has taken place contributes to giving it new perspective and understanding.  Looking at the gospel stories through the lenses of the land of Israel gives then new sharpness.

This year Easter and Mother’s Day are just two weeks apart.  Their close proximity offers the opportunity to view the former through the lens of the latter.  Looking back at Easter from the perspective of Mother’s Day can give the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection a new sharpness.

Mother’s day is a time to focus on the virtues of the good mother.  One that is always mentioned is sacrificial love, her willingness to put her children ahead of herself.  In a recent airplane crash a mother embraced her young child to give her daughter a chance to live.  Her effort was successful.  The child was the only survivor of the plane crash.  This story can be replicated many times over.

At the heart of the Harry Potter saga is the fundamental principle that the most powerful force on earth is sacrificial love.  Harry’s mother sacrifices her life that Harry might live.  The mark on his forehead is a permanent reminder of her sacrifice.  At the end of the saga Harry offers to sacrifice his life so that his friends might be freed from the power of evil.

If mothers can love their children in such extraordinary ways, think how much more God can love us.  Most of us are familiar with John 3:16.  “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” In the events of the cross and Jesus’ resurrection we see demonstrated again that the most powerful force on this earth is sacrificial love.

(This article was originally published May 8, 2011.  Comments may be sent to davidh15503@embarqmail.com.)