Sunday, March 31 : Saint Gregory of Nyssa

This is the first day of another creation. Today God creates “a new heaven and a new earth” (Is 65,17; Rv 21,1)… Today is created the real man, the one who is “in the image and likeness of God” (Gn 1,26). See what sort of world is begun today, this “day that the Lord has made” (Ps 117[118],24)… This day has done away with the pain of death and has brought into the world “the firstborn from the dead” (Col 1,18). Today… the prison house of death has been destoryed, the blind recover their sight, “the daystar from on high rises and comes to the help of those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death” (cf. Lk 1,78-79)… Let us also hasten to the contemplation of this extraordinary sight…, that we may not be overtaken by the women. Let us take in our hands the spices of faith and conscience for these are “the good odor of Christ” (Lk 24,1; 2Cor 2,15). Let us not seek “the Living One among the dead” any more (Lk 24,5), for the Lord turns away anyone who thus seeks him, saying: “Do not touch me” (Jn 20,17)… Do not let your faith represent his bodily state of service any more but worship the one who is in the Father’s glory, in “the condition of God”…; forget “the condition of a slave” (Phil 2,6-7). Let us pay heed to the good news brought by Mary Magdalen more swiftly than a man, thanks to her faith… What is this good news that she brings? That which comes “not from human beings nor through a human being but through Jesus Christ” (Gal 1,1). “Listen, she says, to what the Lord has told us to tell you – you whom he calls his brothers: ‘I go to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’” (Jn 20,17). O what beautiful, good news! He who ,for our sake, became as one of us that he might make of us his brethren… draws all humankind with him to the true Father… He who, for the sake of his many brethren (Rm 8,29), became the Firstborn of the good creation through his flesh, has drawn all nature along with him.

maronite readings – rosary,team