Easter 2012

Easter 2012

This year has been a surprise. My talent and skill as a painter has brought me in contact with a group of people who, while painting, express themselves in their paintings. Their feelings, their emotions, their inner selves became visible on their canvas.
 It has become now my turn to express myself when the Pascal Candle is being prepared for the Easter Vigil service. I have done this for St Theresa Parish Plimmerton NZ.
 After that I painted the elements of the decoration (see attachment).

 Here is my story of Easter Candle. Spread around the cup or chalice there is a cluster of red vines with a lot of grapes. From the pain of rejection during the three years before the last week of His life Jesus now sees the final struggle. The thorns and flogging, hands and feet pierced by the truth that he did not want to own, the feeling of forsakenness and letting go, and the love so terrible it came like a sword in his struggling heart, and finally the silence of the tomb.
That is the cup He asked his Father to take away. But he accepted his Father’s will.

 During his last meal with his friends he took bread. “Take this; it is my body broken for you”.
So we see the bread above the cup, surrounded by a lot of branches of wheat. They are the fruit of the earth and work of human hands. It is for us the bread of life.
 Are we becoming aware to the truth of the bread, the miracle of the loaves in which he multiplied himself amongst us, so that we my become sacrament to each other?

 The Easter candle is growing out of presentation of the Eucharist. In the darkness of the church porch a little light is struck. That is the beginning of Easter light. The community is slowly touched by the little flame that originates from the big candle, symbol of Christ’s of light.
 He is the light of the world, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. For us now, in the year 2012, Christ is light within, started at our Baptism. From that moment, and shown on the candle, the movement in us and in our families, happens, turning, breaking; a cosmic birth, a great light at this sight of the tomb. The five pieces of incense, inserted in the candle, symbolising our permanent summer by prayer.

' From the darkness of church porch the Candle stands now in front: Darkness into Light. We are now talking of Jesus presence in our life made larger by the Easter Journey. We are talking of the resurrection without end. We are walking in the Light.

 Happy Easter to you all