Dear St. Rita Families,
A blessed Easter to you all! I pray that Lent and especially the Sacred Triduum were moments of grace for each of you. Advancing along the path of holiness is often confusing for several reasons, and this is why the time immediately following the Resurrection exhibits some uncertainty for the Apostles. Though joyful, they are surprised and confused at times when Our Lord appears to them, and sometimes they don’t even recognize Him either. In the interim, Peter goes fishing on the Sea of Galilee again (i.e. back to his old life), because he is not exactly sure how to live out the reality of what he has now seen. Everything is different, but the Apostles don’t quite know what that means…yet.
The Easter season can be somewhat similar for us. We’ve just gone through Lent, which, for those who were preparing for Baptism, was known as the Period of Purification and Enlightenment. That name reflects what God’s Grace does in each of us during Lent, especially when God takes hold of our Lent and leads us along the path to Himself. The celebration of the Mysteries of Our Lord’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection on Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday/Easter Sunday is the culmination of the preparation and initiates or takes us deeper into the marvels the Lord has accomplished in our midst. But, what now?
The Easter season does not just mean that Lent is over, even though the season itself has passed. The Easter season is a time of revelation of the Resurrected Christ to us, in which He shows Himself to us in ever deeper and fuller ways, so that we begin to see more clearly where and how He is present to us in our lives, even if we don’t recognize Him at first. Our whole worldview is now colored more brightly by the fact of the Resurrection. My sufferings and challenges and even my joys have a new hue, because I know what comes after. This time is a time of great reflection – of pondering the Mysteries in our hearts like Our Lady did.
Growing in holiness always means focusing even more on God than on myself in some way. And when we do so, we forget ourselves in an ever greater degree, such that it becomes more difficult to analyze what is happening in my soul, if for no other reason than that I am less concerned about me and more concerned about God and others. It is precisely this ‘not looking at myself’ that at first is a bit disconcerting. It is a letting go of control. It is a surrender of outcomes and processes. It reminds me of Luke Skywalker turning off his targeting computer on the Death Star run. And, when you go through it, you look for ways to describe what is happening, though if you focus too much on what is happening, you lose what is happening.
Thus, Easter is also a time of patience. We continue to look to God, who accomplishes His work in His own time. We prepare for the outpouring of the Spirit again on Pentecost, and we expect that it will be a great and bountiful harvest for the Lord (that is what the Jewish feast of Pentecost was – offering to the Lord the firstfruits of the harvest). We recognize, too, that it will also cause some consternation among those who do not seek the Lord, but that, of course, was just part of the Lord’s promise anyways. In the meantime, we rest in the Lord’s victory and await His guidance.
Therefore, we Christians are not of a mind to forget Lent between now and next February. In fact, we cannot ever forget Lent. This is why we must regularly meditate on the Lord’s Passion, even during Easter. It’s why, with very few exceptions (Friday of the Easter Octave – this past Friday – being one of them), the Church still commands that we perform some act of penance, preferably not eating meat, every Friday, the day of Our Lord’s Death. The Paschal Mystery is the lynchpin between the old life and the new life. It’s what makes everything different, and so every week we have a mini-Triduum, marking Friday with a penance and Sunday with Holy Mass, where we receive the Resurrected Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.
But during the Easter season, we must make it a point to ponder – to pray. We are awaiting Pentecost. We are desiring to understand what Christ has accomplished in us during Lent and the Triduum. We are wanting to know the particulars of the mission He has prepared for us. The mission, however, is not so much a command to go and accomplish things, even though He wants us to preach to all nations. The mission first is to be with Christ and to know Him, so that when He sends us forth, we take Him with us, since “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20). We go forth to bring Christ to the world, but if I leave Him behind, while I may perhaps bring some good ideas, it will be my work that I accomplish and not Christ’s.
In Christ,
Fr. Christensen