A small chick begins the long journey to birth. The not-yet-a- bird weighs little more than air; its beak and claws are barely pin pricks. The bird-to-be is in its own little world: protected by the rigid shell, warmed by the mother hen’s body, nourished by the nutrients within the egg’s membrane.

But then the chick begins the work of life. Over several days the chick keeps picking and picking until it can break out from its narrow world -and into an incomparably wider one. But for this to happen, the egg has to go to pieces. New life demands shattering the old.

That is the real Easter egg. Not a complete egg dyed and painted with so many designs and colours. Not an egg that has been hardboiled, impossible to shatter. Not an egg made of chocolate.

The real Easter egg is shattered and destroyed. The real Easter egg exists in broken pieces. The real Easter egg is cracked opened, yielding new life that has taken flight.

For centuries, the world has marked the Resurrection of the Lord with eggs. But the Easter meaning of the egg is found in the struggle of the chick to free itself from its confines so as to take flight into much bigger world beyond it. We struggle to break out of a world that we perceive is going to pieces; we pick away at an existence that leaves us dissatisfied and unfulfilled. The promise of the Easter Christ is that we can break out of our self-contained little worlds and take flight into a world where peace and justice reign, a world illuminated by hope and warmed by love, a world that extends beyond time and place into the forever of God’s dwelling place.

Let our prayer this Easter day be:

Father of unfathomable compassion; re-create us in the love you loosed upon the world in the passion, death and resurrection of your Son. Never let us lose hope that your love can transform the darkest nights of our lives into the glorious morning of Easter joy. May we be willing to let our own needs and wants and lives die so that we might become something greater: sharers in the resurrection of your Son.