The first reading today is one of reorientation, a reorientation only sensible through the lens of our Easter joy. Absent Easter, material goods are ends in themselves, the center of our personal striving in a resource scarce world. As an Easter people, the material world is reordered, made new as abundant gift of God for human sharing. In this first reading today, the early Christian community professes this radical Easter vision: material possessions are not merely ends for our individual need, a means of our personal comfort or sustenance. Rather, material possessions are ultimately a medium to deeper sharing with my sisters and brothers.
Food that was once a scarce resource hunted or grown for personal survival is now the means to deeper communion. Houses that once only provided private shelter now host our human family in fellowship. As we continue in this liturgical season, this Easter vision continues to reorder our norms of human striving, our instincts to horde for only “my own.”
How might you or I more faithfully lean into the Lord in trust this Eastertide, and use His abundant gifts not as ends to our own security but as means for deeper sharing in the human family of Christ?
—Matthew Couture, Provincial Assistant for Secondary and Pre-Secondary Education, Chicago-Detroit Province and Wisconsin Province