Newsletter Vol. 1 Issue 28

The Joy of Easter:
Entering the “Fourth Week” of Our Discernment Series

Having just celebrated Easter Sunday yesterday, our newsletter now turns to what St. Ignatius of Loyola calls “The Fourth Week” of the Spiritual Exercises. Now that we have journeyed with Christ as he suffers in the Third Week, the Fourth Week invites us “to be glad and to rejoice intensely because of the great glory and joy of Christ our Lord.” 

This joy is not the same kind of joy we may experience on Christmas morning. It is more complex, more nuanced, and sometimes not even initially felt as such. Indeed, as we dive into the Gospel accounts, we are invited to see how the Disciples did not understand this joy at all once themselves, and they have been literally in the presence of Jesus for up to three years. To experience this joy with Christ is to bring our own pasts which include our experience with suffering and the cross of Jesus, to the forefront of our hearts. The cross is not forgotten or rejected in the Resurrection but transformed into something new. Like Jesus’ body, which is marked by the nails and the sword, we too are marked by our experiences. We are invited to let God continually transform and redeem all of us as we deepen our relationship with Christ and one another. 

As we have been doing throughout this series, we are invited to rejoice too with the ways people of color have found ways to rejoice amidst intense suffering. People of color, like anyone, are not passive groups of people simply accepting oppression but are groups of people who make sense out of their sufferings and turn it into something new. African American slaves, for example, identified with the Israelites enslaved in Egypt and wrote powerful spirituals that deepened their identity with God and one another, and helped resist the brutality of slavery. 

So too, in the weeks leading up to Pentecost, our Monday series will examine various ways in which work for racial equity, identity, healing, reconciliation, and antiracism are taking place today. These pieces invite us to ask ourselves how, in a discernment series, we ought to take concrete actions for racial equity and antiracism. 

Our Wednesday pieces will continue to invite us into Gospel passages we hear in the Easter Season. Some weeks will follow the readings from the prior Sunday so we can connect our prayer with the beautiful season the Church has given us. Together with our Monday meditations on concrete actions, this Fourth Week of the Discernment series will identify how God is calling us to be co-laborers in the world working for the justice and reconciliation our communities so desperately need.

Resource: The Resurrection Brings Joy

Questions for Reflection: