Yesterday, I got into the attic at the rectory, and I was looking for a box of Easter stuff that I knew was there somewhere.  And I found it.  I was looking for an Easter prayer book, that a friend of mine had given me a few years back.  And it was there in the box.  So I thanked St. Anthony.  And then I spotted it.  There at the bottom of the box, underneath several different colored globs of Easter grass, under several dozen of those plastic eggs that break apart, right there next to the glow-in-the-dark Risen Jesus, that I like put on my dashboard during the Easter season, was a genuine Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg from several years ago.  Now, I love Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs.  So I was amazed that some how I had not eaten this one.  I must have forgotten that it was there.  Or maybe I was saving it for later.  But this Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg was like a rock.  I opened it up to see what it looked like, because, after all, they do put a lot of preservatives in those things.  I think that maybe I was hoping that it was still edible.  But no, concrete does not get as hard as that Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg did.  It was even gray like concrete.  I thought about keeping it for a paper weight, but in the end, I threw it away, feeling more than a little Catholic guilt for wasting a one-time perfectly good Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg.  I think that may be a mortal sin.

        I mention this to you today, because as we come here today to celebrate Easter, it’s been a whole year since we’ve renewed our Baptismal promises, which we are going to do here today.  And in a year, in this world, our hearts can get awful hard.  Forget about old, hard candy bars, hardened hearts are at an epidemic level in our country right now.  And our hard hearts are killing our souls and our spirituality.  In a time when we worry and take better care of our physical hearts than ever before, we make the heart of our souls  as hard as can be.  And we say that we do this for our own protection.  You can’t be soft in this world.  You can’t have too much of a heart in 2008.  You care too much, you love too much, you get overly concerned, and this world will eat you up.  We get cautioned on this all the time.  It is so easy to harden your heart in the world that we live in today.  We do it all the time.  And all of a sudden things that we used to care about, just become numbers.  Another angry person kills their ex-spouse in Noblesville, and all we can think to ask is “How many is that this year?”  Another child dies in foster care in Indianapolis, and maybe we think for a few seconds about how horrible it is, but then we just add it to our total for the year.  Another soldier dies in Iraq, another family missing another husband and a father, and maybe for a second we say a quick prayer, but then it’s on to our count for the month, or for the year, or our total for the deployment.  Don’t you love that?  We can’t even call it a war, because that’s too scary of a word for us, so we call it a deployment.  We change the words to make it all so much easier to harden your heart.  And that’s exactly what this world wants us to do, harden our hearts!  It’s not an abortion.  It’s the “termination of the pregnancy”.   It’s not a sin.  It’s a “lifestyle choice”.  It’s not greed or envy or pride.  It’s a “strong sense of ambition”.  We harden our language, we harden our attitudes, and we harden our hearts.  And pretty soon, we don’t even know who we are any more.  Because if you harden your heart enough, are you really still human?

       This Easter, today, Jesus offers us all new hearts.  Today, as we celebrate that Sacred Heart of His that started beating again in that tomb, everybody gets the chance to start over with new hearts.  On this Feast of the Resurrection, Jesus wins for all of us the chance to soften our hearts and begin again, with new hearts and new love.  God can’t work with hard hearts, any more than a sculptor can work with old, hard clay.  My brothers and sisters, it’s time for a change, for all of us.  And God offers us a change today, right here, right now.  This doesn’t have to be like every other Easter.  This could be the day that God gives you a new soft, living, loving heart!  This could be a whole new start for you.  But you gotta let Him.  You have to invite Him into your life and specifically pray and ask Him, “Give me a new heart!”   “Soften my heart, Oh Lord.”   He’ll do it.  And you’ve got to be prepared for that.  But we can’t go on with hard hearts.  We’re losing our souls all because we have rocks where our hearts are supposed to be.  Aren’t you tired of the hatred, and the selfishness, and the apathy?  God certainly is.  We need new hearts.  Easter hearts!

       In a little while, we are going to come walking down these aisles and go to Communion, just like we do every Easter.  Let’s make this different this year.  When you come down here to go to Communion, let our greatest prayer be that our Risen Jesus soften our hearts today.  We don’t want to lose our compassion, or our concern, or our love.  Those things are already rare enough in our world today.  Today we need Jesus to give us new hearts.  Let that we our prayer.  Let that be our hope.  Let that be our reality.

        A hardened Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg is a terrible waste.   A hardened heart is even more of a terrible waste.  Let Jesus do something about that today.  Give Him your heart!

        On behalf of all of us,  Fr. Dale and myself, Deacon Steve, our seminarians, our entire staff and faculty here at St. Maria Goretti, Happy Easter to you and your family.  Let’s really enjoy this Feast!

         May God bless us this Easter and renew and reform our hearts,  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…  AMEN!!!

                                                      St. Maria Goretti …                Pray for us !!!