Mosaic: Inspires us to live Easter

	Guest Commentary  Fr. Don Lange

As I kneel in awe before the exposed Blessed Sacrament in the Bishop O'Donnell Chapel at the Bishop O'Connor Catholic Pastoral Center in Madison, the mosaic of the Risen Lord Jesus seems to reach out with his crucified hands of love as if to say, "See how much I love you! I love you so much I died on the cross to redeem you from your sins."

The death and resurrection of Jesus which we celebrate during Holy Week is the heart of our faith. In First Corinthians 15:14, St. Paul writes, "And if Christ has not been raised, then empty (too) is our preaching; empty, too, your faith!"

Transforming the church

When the Risen Lord appeared to the apostles, Jesus transformed them from frightened and confused persons, who deserted him at the cross, into courageous Christian witnesses.

When Christ died, rose, and returned to the Father, he sent the Holy Spirit to transform the church into his body. But we must let him. The Holy Spirit gave the apostles and others the courage to proclaim their faith and to die for their beliefs. This shows the continuity between the Jesus of Nazareth and the Risen Lord, and between the Risen Lord and the Christian Community.

Faith in Jesus saves us

The mosaic of the Risen Lord is based upon Acts 3:1-10 when Peter and John are approached by a man crippled from birth. The man begged for alms. Peter fixed his gaze on him and said, " Look at us!"

The crippled man gave them his whole attention, expecting to get some alms. But Peter fixed his gaze on the man and said, "I have neither silver nor gold but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus the Nazarene, rise and walk!" And the healed man leapt for joy as he began to praise God and walk in God's ways.

Later Peter, James, and John are hauled before the Sanhedrin. As the Bible verse on the mosaic indicates (Acts 4:10), Peter bravely testifies that the Sanhedrin and all the people of Israel should know it was "in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even in this name does he stand before you sound."

The meaning of the resurrection is our faith that Jesus is Lord of the Universe and that we have been raised up with him. Having died to self and sin during Lent, at Easter we rise to share the life and light of the Risen Lord. We renew our baptismal promises and we rejoice in the glory of our new members begotten through Baptism.

Easter calls for a conversion of hearts. That change means we are free from the old self and we are filled with the Easter joy of Risen Jesus.

We have seen Risen Lord

Like Mary Magdalen we can proclaim through faith that we have seen the Risen Lord. We see his smile in the newness of spring flowers, in the songs of the birds, and in the lives of our brothers and sisters who suffer in glory.

We discover him in the faces of the poor, in the pure laughter of children, and in the gifts of bread and wine which Jesus, who presides at the Eucharist, transforms into his body and blood, the pledge of our future glory.

The next time that you visit the Bishop O'Donnell Chapel, please reflect upon the Risen Lord. Prayerfully ask him to heal you as he healed the beggar. Ask him to enable you to walk through time into the fullness of God's eternal Easter love. Have a Blessed Easter! Alleluia.

Fr. Don Lange is a pastor emeritus in the Diocese of Madison.

Catholic education:
Teaches that service is lifetime commitment

		Eye on the  Capitol  Kim Wadas

As a new member of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference staff, this is my first opportunity to reflect upon the primary policy areas I monitor in the state legislature, education and health care.

Generally speaking there aren't many laws passed in Wisconsin affecting Catholic education. This may leave some under the impression that a clear connection between Catholic education and public policy doesn't exist.

Everyone understands new laws have the potential to affect Catholic schools, but many do not recognize how Catholic education affects the development of public policy.

Own experience

In my own experience, I have realized how Catholic education has focused my commitment to public service. Growing up my family moved several times, but my parents managed to send me to Catholic school from kindergarten through high school.

I transferred from a public university after my sophomore year of college to attend and graduate from Marquette University. And in graduate school, I had the opportunity to teach fifth graders religious education.

In all my experiences, I felt there was something unique in Catholic education. It was something beyond the building, activities, academics, and even beyond the symbols of faith. Through my Catholic education I learned what it means to be "called to serve."

Life commitment

Catholic education emphasizes that service can be more than something that you do for a few hours on the weekend, or even for a few years. Service is a life commitment and we, as Catholics, should value those career and volunteer opportunities that allow us to offer daily service to our community.

My education in public service wasn't just taught to me in words. It was shown through example.

As a student I saw members of religious orders fulfill a lifetime commitment to serving others. I saw service performed daily through the work of the Sister who managed the religious education program in which I taught. It was shown to me through the teachers, administrators, and catechists who gave of time and opportunity to work in Catholic education.

I saw it in staff, parents, and volunteers; people who served on school boards, parish councils, finance committees, and a myriad of other groups.

Then I started to notice how many of those parents and volunteers worked in careers dedicated to public service - police officers, firefighters, lawyers, judges, doctors, nurses, day care providers, public officials, and other callings.

'Called to serve'

In the Catholic Church, public service is a value. We are taught that being called to serve, and fulfilling that call, offers more than positions that provide better pay, better hours, and less stress.

Public service teaches you to value people, not just when they are vulnerable or in need, but also in their ordinary, everyday form.

It is because I have learned first-hand through my Catholic education the value of public service that I felt compelled serve in the public forum as well. It is also the reason I am not surprised to discover how many public servants I meet were "raised Catholic" or received a Catholic education.

There are many reasons to monitor the interaction of Catholic education and public policy, but perhaps one of the most important is to bear witness to how the leaders of tomorrow are shaped by the example of Catholic education today.

Kim Wadas is the associate director for education and health care concerns of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference in Madison.

Easter Triduum:
God comes to our rescue, again

		The Catholic  Difference  George Weigel

The calendar pages turn, Lent unfolds - and once again, God comes to the rescue of our humanity.

That is what we remember, ponder, and celebrate each year in the great Easter Triduum: the astonishing good news that the Creator of the universe entered his creation, in the person of his son, in order to redirect the story back to its proper end, which is eternal life within the light and love of the Blessed Trinity. That's a rescue story for the ages.

'Scandal' of the Cross

It is also, as Paul put it to those rowdy Corinthians, "a stumbling block to Jews and a folly to gentiles" (1 Corinthians 1:23). Other New Testament texts refer to the "scandal" of the Cross. But what kind of "scandal" is this?

It is not a scandal against reason; it is a scandal beyond reason. Creation, Joseph Ratzinger once wrote, displays the "exaggerated infinity of God's love."

The love of God, that mysterious exchange within the life of the Trinity in which the gift eternally enhances both the giver and the receiver, bursts the bounds of the inner-trinitarian life and there is - Creation.

Yet if the exaggeration of the divine love is manifest in the Creation, how much more is it manifest in the Incarnation and the Redemption?

'The face of God'

The God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus is, Benedict XVI constantly reminds us, "the God with a human face."

As the pope put it last September in Germany, in the first section of the Creed we confess that the world began, not accidentally, but purposefully: a divine purpose is at work in the created order.

But then, Benedict teaches, we get more: "God does not leave us groping in the dark." He comes looking for us in history. The creative reason and love from which everything proceeds "has a face:" the face of goodness, the face of love.

For Christians, the "face of God" is the Holy Face of Christ. On Good Friday, we see the exaggerated love of God at its most scandalous: for the Holy Face is struck, spat upon, lacerated, crowned with thorns.

Here is a scandal beyond reason: what the world sees as the quintessence of irrational brutality, the eyes of faith see as a love that has burst the bounds of our reason to show us the deeper "reason" of God, which is the reason of infinite love.

Irrationality

We live in a season of irrationality, as the pictures in our newspapers regularly remind us. The irrationality of the early 21st century is not only the irrationality of murder-in-the-name-of-God, however; it is also the irrationality of the radical skeptic, who insists that human beings can never know the truth of anything with surety.

Corrosive skepticism is eating away at the cultural vitals of Europe, the continent that gave the world the very idea of reason; corrosive skepticism is not unknown in America, which is Europe transplanted.

At this moment in history, confronted on the one side by irrational faith and on the other by a profound loss of faith in reason, the Church, Benedict XVI insists, must "make more room for rationality."

The power of love

The rationality the Church proclaims is not, however, identical to the rationality of the scientists. It is a more ample rationality, a bigger reason.

For the reason to which Christianity gives witness is the reason that is the Logos, the Word of God, the second person of the Blessed Trinity. And the second person of the Trinity, incarnate, displays for us the human face of God, the face of infinitely exaggerated love.

The reason of God, the Logos through whom all things were made, calls us beyond reason to love. Walking the Way of the Cross, Jesus reaches the end of the road of the world's rationality - and becomes, thereby, a stumbling block and a folly.

But a more ample "reason" is at work here: the logic of love, carried out to infinity. That is what bursts the bounds of the tomb on Easter morning.

The tomb is empty. The world has been suffused with the power of divine love, which is the most living thing there is.

George Weigel is a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.