Do you hope to live life everlasting with Jesus Christ?
The Liturgical religious world begins the celebration of Easter with Lent which involves a series of activities precedes death and resurrection of Jesus. The word and the season Lent comes from the Anglo-Saxon word lencten meaning spring which comes from the Anglo-Saxon "long" indicating that the days of Spring get longer. So the word Lent has no particular religous significance. Observed since the seventh century, Lent consists of the forty days preceding Easter. Beginning on Ash Wednesday, the forty-day period does not include the six Sundays. The six Sundays are Sundays in Lent, not of Lent. Ash Wednesday, a day of penitence and self-examination, is sometimes observed with an agape or love feast. Almost from the beginning, Easter was a season rather than a single day, including a memorial of the death of Christ as well as a celebration of the resurrection. Lent approaches its climax in the closing days as the passion of Christ becomes more vivid in the consciousness of the Christian during the week of Good Friday. Lent is more than remembrance; it is a preparation for a fuller participation in the mystery of the passion and resurrection of Christ. The goal of the preparation is that the Cross Bearer may experience the weight and wings of the Cross, the suffering and liberation, the rejection and the victory of the Cross. From the Cross Bearers Lenten series, published by Lay Renewal Publications, Tucker, Georgia.
As we approach Easter this year, we need to remember that because of the resurrection, we are going to live forever. From the moment we are born, the human body is in a process of decay, but thank God because of the resurrection we have the hope of eternal life. When death occurs, the body goes to the grave, the spirit that lived in that body goes into the presence of Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:8, “We are confident, I say, and willing to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord).” The spirit will be separated from the body until the day of resurrection when the body and the soul will be united and glorified (John 11:25, “Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:).” Thank God for the hope of the resurrection.