He Is Risen!
Easter 2010

The Lord is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia, alleluia!!

Easter takes on a special significance for us here at Little Portion Hermitage this year. Not only is it the culmination of the solemn celebration of the Triduum, Holy Week, and the entire Lenten season, but it also marks a new beginning for us in our rebuilding process after the monastery fire of April 2008. It has been a two-year process, but it’s finally reaching a glorious completion!

Easter week also includes two other major events for us this year. On Easter Wednesday we begin our Leadership Conference. This is always a most special time for the leaders of our entire community to come together for teaching, fellowship, and planning. I will be giving a special teaching this year based upon the fresh move of the Holy Spirit we sense occurring in our midst at this time.

We also have the culmination of some financial reorganization meetings that have been going on for over a month now. We do this every few years as a matter of course, but this year we have been the beneficiaries of some wonderful help from top-notch people, both locally and from Houston. We have high expectations that this reorganization will simplify our records in a most elegant manner.

But the unquestioned high point within the Octave of Easter this year will be the dedication of the New Monastery and church April 10, 2010 on Easter Saturday! It has been a most rugged and trying two years as the monastic community has prayed, worked, eaten, and had meetings within an extremely cramped makeshift facility. The dedication of the New Monastery will allow us to “breathe” again! We will finally have the room to appropriately pray together, eat together, and carry out our ministries together. We are looking forward to this momentous occasion with great anticipation and joy! It is most appropriate that this joyous occasion falls within the Octave of Easter this year!

The day after the fire of 2008 Abbot Jerome Kodell of Subiaco Abbey in Arkansas visited us, and gave us the word: “You will rebuild from the ashes!” How appropriate that the Lenten season which begins on Ash Wednesday by having the sign of the cross traced upon our foreheads with ashes, comes to an end on Easter Sunday and the celebration of the Octave of Easter. Likewise from the ashes of the fire of April 2008, we are rising up with a New Monastery at the beginning of this Easter season in 2010. The symbolism is not lost on the integrated monastic community that lives here. We share it with you now that you might pray with us through this wonderful rebirth that occurs during the Easter season this year.

Of course the symbolism of Easter that occurs every year of our lives is simply that if we bring the old self to the cross of Jesus and let it die, we will be born again of the Spirit, as we become new creations, and new people in Jesus Christ. The old self has died. It is now Christ who lives within us!

This Easter let us all let go of all the old ways of self-preoccupation and sin, and allow ourselves to be made new in the self-emptying love of Jesus Christ! If we do this love will conquer hatred, self giving will conquer self-preoccupation and obsession, forgiveness will conquer judgment, justice rooted in mercy will conquer vengeance done in the name of justice, kindness will conquer cruelty, and the meekness blessed by Jesus Christ in the Beatitudes will conquer arrogance and pride. Then the whole world can be made new! This is the greater message of Easter this year, and every year until we meet him face-to-face.

John Michael Talbot