On Sunday, many churches will be overflowing as parishioners go to church to celebrate Easter.
Easter is always a magical time for children.
As a family, we always held off hiding the Easter candy around the house until after Mass. This action prompted our youngest to go to church a few years back and pray that the Easter Bunny remembers to come to our house and then he proceeded to put our address in his prayers just in case the bunny might have forgotten where he was to go in all his haste.
For adults, Easter usually means putting on a new spring outfit that celebrates the arrival of warmer weather after a too long and cold winter.
However, Easter is more than just these two events.
For Christians, Easter is a celebration of eternal life shown by Jesus Christ’s resurrection.
It appears to be more than coincidence with Easter on Sunday that during the last two months, through courtroom accounts, of accused Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar Tsanaev, we as a community had to relive that terrible day two years ago when bombs exploded at the finish line killing three and injuring hundreds. We reflect on how close to danger members of our community were on that day as they came to view the Marathon.
For the last two months we have heard from bombing survivors and the wounds that they suffered.
On Monday during the trial, we heard about the autopsy in gruesome detail of the youngest victim, Martin Richard, and how his eight- year old body was just destoryed by the bomb.
Now we are hearing from Tsarnaev’s defense team in their attempt to spare him the death penalty.
We are not going to debate whether the death penalty should be applied in this case. What we are going to ask is that our readers reflect upon the meaning of Easter as examplified by Jesus Christ in his passion and resurrection and decide if the death penalty should be invoked.
While the death penalty decision rests with the men and women of the jury, we as a community need to decide what we would do if the decision was ours to make and whether we truly would follow Jesus Christ’s example.for the healing of that terrible day to be complete.