There is a wonderful commercial where a little girl is sitting in the driver’s seat of a car and her father is leaning in giving her all sorts of instructions about safe driving. When the camera swings away from the father and back to her we see she is not a little girl at all but a mature young woman. The commercial illustrates how, for this father, his little girl will always be his little girl no matter how old she is. As human beings we tend to cling to what was, to what we are familiar with. The Risen Jesus cautions Mary Magdalene against this tendency when he tells her, “Stop holding on to me,” stop holding on to the way I have been with you in the past and come to see the new way I will be with you going forward. In our spiritual lives we must resist the temptation to nostalgia, to doing things the way it was done in the past, and see how God is asking us to respond to the divine presence today.
APRIL22024
By Church Staff
