Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality (CACS)'s Podcast
The Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality (CACS) is a centre for research and formation that promotes spiritual formation and renewal, drawing on the rich resources of the venerable Carmelite tradition.
It is an apostolate of the Anglo-Irish Province of the Discalced Carmelites, based at the Carmelite Priory at Boars Hill, Oxford, England.
OUR MISSION
CACS strives to achieve its mission through structured study and formation programmes in spirituality from the Carmelite perspective, especially Prayer and Spiritual Direction. At the Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality, you are welcome to enter into the silence where God’s voice is heard in prayer, word and sacrament, inviting you to journey ever more deeply into a place of growth and wholeness. Our goal is to bring people to experience a life-transforming friendship with God through a lived experience of Carmelite spirituality that is authentic to its biblical roots.
Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality (CACS)'s Podcast
Easter Sunday
EASTER SUNDAY
Word & Wisdom is a weekly reflection on the Sunday’s scriptures and the wisdom of the Carmelite tradition. It promises to offer you real spiritual food to sustain you on the journey.
This Word and Wisdom Podcast is brought to you by the Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality, Oxford (carmelite.uk.net).
To receive audio and written copies, subscribe by emailing podcasts@cacs.org.uk
To connect with our Living Prayer Podcast on Youtube, kindly click: https://www.youtube.com/@CACSOxford
Easter Sunday First Reading from Acts chapter 10 verse 34. Forecast what Paul and Barnabas announce in Antioch. We bring you the good news that what God promised to our ancestors, he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising Jesus.
Peter had already given an eyewitness account of the resurrection to the Gentiles, assuring them that God shows no partiality. Acceptable to Peter are those from every nation who live in awe of this mystery and do what they know in their heart to be right. He says with the conviction of an experienced disciple that Jesus Christ is Lord of all, anointed by the Holy Spirit to heal those sick in soul and body because of sin and healing all who were oppressed by the devil.
Peter testified to who Jesus was to what he had done and to what he had to endure. Put to death? Yes. Hanging from a tree? Yes.
But his story did not end there. God raised him on the third day. He appeared to witnesses like he himself, eating and drinking with them and commanding them to preach the good news.
He foresaw that the risen Lord would come to judge the living and the dead, and that of his kingdom there would be no end. In a few short verses from Paul's letter to the Colossians, we receive instruction pertaining to how the event of Christ's resurrection ought to affect us personally. These two directives, fully obeyed, will be life-changing.
First, we are to seek our happiness not in what is here below but in what is above, developing a life of intimacy with the Trinity and letting that relationship transform our lives. Secondly, rather than seek worldly notoriety, we ought to live our days on earth, hidden with Christ in God. We attend to the duty of the moment while awaiting the life to be revealed to us in glory.
In the words of St. Therese of Lisieux, a moment is a treasure. One act of love will make us know Jesus better. It will bring us close to him during the whole of eternity.
Perhaps in reading the living flame of love, she learned from St. John of the Cross that that the Father of Lights diffuses himself abundantly as the sun does its rays, always showing himself gladly along the highways and byways, to find his delights with the children of the earth at a common table in the world. On that first Easter morning, before the sun had risen, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb to reverence Jesus. To her sheer amazement, she saw that the stone covering it had been removed.
What she witnessed was so beyond her comprehension that she had to find Simon Peter, John, and the others to share with. They did not hesitate to run with her towards the tomb. John arrived there first, but when he saw the linen wrappings lying there, he waited for Peter to precede him.
Though they had witnessed the empty tomb, they did not yet fully understand the scripture that he must rise from the dead. Soon enough their eyes would be opened, and when that happened, nothing about the life they once knew would ever be the same again. For such, in the words of St. John of the Cross, is the inebriation and courage of love.