Easter is God’s Greatest Treasure for His Creation!

"They sold her jar for $8,000.00. She never really knew its real value” was quoted from a Washington Post article.  The article told how almost every day she drank her hot soup from the jar at her favorite downtown shelter.

 At night, as the article noted, she would wrap the jar in her blanket while sleeping on the grates. Later, when she died from the cold, her friends found this favorite jar neatly wrapped and tucked deeply in her shopping bag. 

This colorfully painted endearing urn resembled any ordinary jar. However, this beautiful colonial jar carried the hidden pleasure of bringing its homeless owner much relief and joy.  Easily overlooked, her precious treasure remained unseen because “it was just an ordinary looking jug.” 

Easter reminds us not to overlook what is our precious treasure.  Often, we get inundated with dyeing colorful eggs, decorating Easter baskets, hiding eggs for the big Easter egg hunt, alleluias, the lilies’ fragrance, or the multi-colored jellybeans, forgetting the real meaning of this happily welcomed spring feastday.

Easter’s truly precious treasure is about Jesus Christ rising from the dead for us. Since Jesus is the first-born of the dead, Jesus followers are now gifted with the same resurrection when their time on this earth passes. 

Jesus, the savior the world, grants all his baptized family his same destiny: to be with God for eternity.  There, we exchange our ordinariness for a piece of God’s glory as does all God’s family. Now we are asked “that all may be one” accepting each other as part of God's family. 

Christ's resurrection announces that even the poorest belong to God's family. As members of his family, we celebrate this treasure with all others. In this way Jesus can see his life and teachings come to completion through us. 

 Jesus hopes this new life will soften our feelings toward one another. From the tulips, and the daffodils, right through to the hyacinths, Easter shouts: "Don't overlook this precious treasure! Our ordinariness has eternal significance." 

St. Francis de Sales writes:  “We should live in this world as if our spirit were already in heaven.”

Easter is that great moment in time which seals the above phrase forever in our hearts.  God’s redeemed family will forever live as one! That directive alone is more precious than even the homeless woman’s joy in her much-adored colonial pottery.