Mass Readings Audio
https://bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/2021-04-04-usccb-daily-mass-readings

The Resurrection of the Lord (Mass of Easter Day) – April 4, 2021

Happy Easter and welcome to the one hundred and fifty-eighth episode of By Your Life. I’m Lisa Huetteman and I know that you have a hundred different things you could be doing right now, so I thank you for choosing By Your Life.

My goal is to inspire, empower, support, challenge, and encourage you to connect Sunday, with Monday-Friday, in a secular business world. It’s my desire to help you live our Catholic faith in the marketplace. I hope to offer you practical ways to go forth and glorify the Lord by your life.

In this edition, we’ll reflect on the readings for The Resurrection of the Lord –The Mass of Easter Day. I approached this Easter with unimaginable gratitude. It was a year ago that our churches were closed, and we celebrated the empty tomb in what felt like the tomb of our homes. We’d already been sequestered for weeks and had no idea when we would be able to come together again. I’m blessed to be in an area of the country, and in the world, where our churches have been open to community Masses since last Pentecost, and I don’t take that for granted. But if you’d have asked me a year ago, I’d have thought for sure that things would be a lot different now. And they are, just not in the way I expected.

And now, we’ve come through the 40 days of Lent, are you different now too? I hope so. After all, why bother going through Lent only to come out the other end just as you started.

What’s the Point?

I had a client who asked me to facilitate a strategic planning retreat for his company’s leadership team. I asked when the last time was that they had done a strategic plan and was told three years earlier. When I asked what they had accomplished in terms of executing their plan, I was told they really hadn’t done anything. That defeats the purpose of holding a strategic planning retreat. Why bother if everything is going to be the same afterward?

On Holy Saturday, my mother was reminiscing about when she was a child and how they looked forward to noon that day. I guess it was the tradition in their house that you could break the Lenten fast at noon on Holy Saturday, and for that little girl, it meant eating the candy that had been stored up for 6 weeks. Similarly, our pastor mentioned at the end of Mass Easter morning, that after the last Mass of the day, he planned to have a nice cold can of Coke, something he’d denied himself for 40 days. I’m not suggesting that it isn’t okay to indulge in those things you’ve given up, but I am asking what’s the point if nothing has changed.

The point is, that we’re not just supposed to die to self during Lent and then go back to living for ourselves once it is over. No! We die to self so we can rise with Christ. So, has this journey through Lent to Easter changed you?

The Challenge of Change

Change is not easy. Changing yourself is even more difficult. I had a client who was trying to work on his “short fuse.” He acknowledged that he needed to change how he reacted to others, but when he thought someone treated him with disrespect, his reaction was let the f-bomb fly and give it right back to them. This guy was single-handedly creating a toxic work environment. When I asked him if he thought it was okay for others to treat him with disrespect, he said no. “So why then,” I asked, “if you think these people are wrong in the way they treated you, why would you want to be like them? Why would you be disrespectful to them if you think it is wrong?” He acknowledged what the appropriate response should be, yet he felt a sense of “fairness” in giving back what was given to him. “An eye for an eye” so to speak. Perhaps he was right but when something is “fair”, it doesn’t mean it is right. In the end, no one wins.

I had another client where I was asked to work with a team of people who were not getting along. By their own admission, on a scale of 1-10, where 1 is toxic and 10 is a great place to work, their work environment was a 3. Things had gotten so bad that they were not even able to describe what a positive, healthy work environment would look like. So, I asked each member of the team, what they thought was the root cause. Each of them pointed to someone else as being the source of the problem. The thing was, each person who wasn’t a part of the solution, was part of the problem.

I’m sure you’ve heard the quote that is often attributed to Mahatma Gandhi: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Gandhi in fact said: “We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.”

The only way for my client’s toxic work environment to improve, was for the people working there to change, to be the people they wanted to work with. Waiting for others to change was pointless. Their environment would immediately improve the day they decided to “be the change.”

Focus on the New

If you want to change, you have to change from something to something. Focus on what you want to become. As St. Paul wrote to the Colossians, “If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above… Think of what is above, not of what is on earth” (Col 3:1-2) Don’t think about what you don’t want, think about what you want!

My clients didn’t make an about-face change in their attitudes or behaviors, but they made progress. And, when they failed, they caught themselves and took corrective action. That’s all anyone can do. Set your sights on the new and improved version of yourself and let go of the old.

If you have been raised with Christ, your life should be different, you should be different. So, what’s different? If the 40 days haven’t been enough to make a noticeable change, keep on going. There’s no rule that says you have to go back to eating candy or drinking Coke just because Lent is over. Keep making progress. And when you fail, correct yourself, and keep focusing on the change you want to make.

What you Focus on Matters

What you focus on matters. What you focus on is what becomes powerful in your life. There is scientific evidence that supports this. It is called experience-dependent neuroplasticity and at the heart of the research is the finding that experience changes the brain. Our brains are made up of billions of neurons and different neurons are responsible for different parts of our experience, whether it’s eating, sleeping, laughing, spelling, or sensing threat, loving, nurturing, or learning. Every time you have an experience, the relevant neurons switch on and start firing. As this happens, neural connections get stronger and new synapses start growing.  Or, as they say in neuroscience, “Neurons that fire together, wire together.” The neurons that aren’t as needed will eventually wither away.

According to Rick Hanson, psychologist, senior fellow of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, and New York Times best-selling author of Hardwiring Happiness, “Mental states become neural traits. Day after day, your mind is building your brain.” What you focus on will determine the parts of your brain that fire, wire and strengthen, influencing what the brain will focus on in the future, whether positive or negative.

Psychiatrist Karen Young wrote in her blog Hey Sigmund, “If you let your mind settle on self-criticism, self-loathing, pain, distress, stress, worry, fear, regret, guilt, these feelings and thoughts will shape your brain. On the other hand, if you focus on positive feelings and frame situations with a tilt towards the positive, eventually your brain will take on a shape that reflects this, hardwiring and strengthening connections around resilience, optimism, gratitude, positive emotion, and self-esteem.” And, Dr. Hanson says, “If you want to develop more gratitude, keep resting your mind on feeling thankful. If you want to feel more loved, look for and stay with experiences in which you feel included, seen, appreciated, liked, or cherished.”

Repetition, Repetition

This is the same principle that physical therapists use when retraining the body to do tasks that may have been lost due to illness or injury, they repeat the movement until the brain relearns it. I think this is important because sometimes we can get so bogged down with the challenges of our daily lives that we forget to step back to put things into perspective. We can become overwhelmed by the enormous goal ahead of us and the sheer magnitude of items on our task list we don’t know where to start. We can get stuck in the mire of the insignificant that the important passes us by. So, what should we do?

Start by doing something good! When speaking of Jesus, Peter said, “He went about doing good…” (Acts 10:38) and so should we if we are seeking a life in Christ. We don’t have to go about “healing all those oppressed by the devil… ” (Acts 10:38), as Jesus did. We just need to do something good. Start small. Start with one thing you know you should do but don’t. Start with doing one small, good thing today, that you normally wouldn’t do. Then tomorrow, do it again or do some other small, good thing that you normally wouldn’t do. And, again the next day, and the next, and the next and before you know it, you’ll have a week’s worth of small, good things that you’ve done. Taken alone, these small, good things may seem insignificant. These small, good things may not change the world, but they add up to making a positive change in other people’s lives, and in your life too.

So, what are you going to let your mind settle on today? What is above or what is on earth? “Seek what is above!” (Col 3:1) Seeking what is above and not what is on earth will change your priorities. It will change the criteria you use to make decisions. It will change your approach to relationships. It will change your outlook, your mood, your response to whatever life throws at you. Seeking what is above will help you to be the change you want to see in the world.

You were raised with Christ! “He went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.” (Acts 10:38) God is with you too. Now, take that to work this week.

Let us ask the Holy Spirit to help us be a witness and a model of all that Christ did for us. May we die to self and be guided by the Risen Lord in how we lead and serve others this week.

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit, and they shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth.

May God bless you abundantly this Easter Week and may you glorify the Lord by your life. Amen.

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