Published in the Westchester Guardian, May 2014
The first candy appeared early on local store shelves, utilizing that space once allocated to a prior food fest. Televised commercials then began appearing on the airways with ever increasing efficiency. Again, we are told joy can come from purchasing things, especially things for children. Seems like Christmas greed has returned and this ‘one’ day festival is seemingly over without any deeper reflection. If it was not for certain personal situations, I too would have enjoyed more, ate more and questioned less, pondered less.
“Easter tells us that life is to be interpreted not simply in terms of things but in terms of ideals.” For some years, I had looked forward to a fast passage of Lent, to an end of various winter anxieties and a spring that can promise so much hope. I looked forward for my own personal joy, my individual goals and rewards, easily forgetting that “Easter is the demonstration of God that life is essentially spiritual and timeless.” Both Charles M. Crowe.
Our Churches give us fifty days to offer thanksgiving to God for the gift of Christ’s victory over sin and death. The Resurrection was revolutionary and is living, reoccurring continuously through our spiritual and religious environs. Easter is the constant renewal confirming what happened in that first century. Guadalupe is not a tale of an Indian’s imagination, but a living story, living through a tilma that through all understanding should not exist, but is alive in all our times. It is also Lourdes, Knock, Fatima, and countless other events and individuals…Padre Pio – the living crucifix, Fr. Solanus Casey, Mother Teresa, Sr. Katharine Drexel and so on. All whom have experienced and displayed the supernatural – above, beyond what we understand as the natural world. Events like these do not occur in vacuum and without cause.
I consistently overlooked that Easter is not just a one day celebration but a season of events, remembrances and prayers, getting caught up in my own personal life, problems and self-identity. For better or worse, our secular culture also seemingly, gets immersed in the economics of daily life/survival. How important is what we are losing so detrimental to our various healths – spiritual, family, mental, etc.? How much more would we as individuals, as a family members and as a society, gain by knowing the historical (going back to early Judaism and Pentecost) and the spiritual? I have no answers, just questions. Maybe someone does. “The Resurrection above all constitutes the confirmation of all Christ’s works and teachings. All truths, even those most inaccessible to human reason, find their justification if Christ by his Resurrection has given the definitive proof of his divine authority, which he had promised” (The Catechism of the Catholic Church, #651).
To assist in my personal journey, to seek reinforcement over my chronic insecurities, anxieties, I try to reach outward toward the spiritual where the greatest constraints are not monetary, but secularism, materialism and the ever pressing clock with fast approaching, unmet deadlines. I also must tread carefully, for seeking can become an obsession in itself.
The Roman, Eastern and other Churches have established, ingrained practices for the lay person on this quest of a fifty-day celebration of Easter Sunday to Pentecost, aiding in the pursuit to a personal resurrection. A remedy of hope for life and my imperfections? Can the Resurrection free me of my own trials if I learn and use what all Church’s offer? Can this singularity in all of history be fully comprehended?
The fifty-day celebration is part of Easter, not for Easter. Lasting until Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit (the Birth of the Church). This solemnity gives one the opportunity to reflect, renew, in a culture that does not give time nor reason to celebrate. The power of our economic system can and will overshadow our beliefs of this true myth and mystery of a resurrection that conquers death and corruption of the body.
Additionally, the Easter Season is a contrast to our society where, sadly, the longest celebration for our national heritage are eagerly desired three day weekends – Memorial, President’s and Labor Days. Even our nation’s birth is a short one day break from our mundane money-making routine.
“The joyful news that He is risen does not change the contemporary world. Still before us lie work, discipline, sacrifice. But the fact of Easter (the entire season) gives us the spiritual power to do the work, accept the discipline, and make the sacrifice.” – Henry Knox Sherrill. I am guilty of doing chores and tasks piece meal, never taking in the entire project from beginning to end, only in segments and celebration of religious holidays is an example. I may also be over selective in choosing which days, activities, sacrifices I am willing to participate.
“The big problem that confronts Christianity (me) is not Christ’s enemies. The real religious problem exists in the souls of those us who in their hearts believe in God, and who recognize their obligations to love Him and serve Him-yet do not!” C.G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul. It can be so complicated at times to serve. Too many how, whys, where’s and when’s. Maybe the answer to many problems may lie I what we give instead of what we gather for ourselves.
At least it is not celebrated, commercialized, hijacked by free enterprise which has corrupted so thoroughly Christmas. Yet.
St. Augustine, “The fifty days of Easter exclude fasts, since it is in anticipation of the banquet that awaits us on high.“ (Sermon 252). Easter culminates in the Ascension to the Father (after 40 days) and the sending of the Holy Spirit upon the Church (the fiftieth day).
The End
#948
Glenn Slaby Blog