How can we celebrate more fully the season of Easter?

Q: Dear Father John, The wonderful season of Easter is upon us. Lent has been a great time to prepare for the victory of the cross over death. Thank-you Jesus Christ, Holy Redeemer. What are appropriate things we can do to celebrate Easter, especially for the entire season?  

A: I love this question! Ever since I was ordained, I have been struck every year by the decrease in daily Mass attendance as soon as Lent ends. I am not trying to say that everyone is obliged to go to Mass on a daily basis (though it’s certainly not a bad idea, if you can work it out), but I often wonder if the benefits of our Lenten spiritual disciplines are sometimes eviscerated by our Easter laxity. Lent, after all, is only six weeks long, while the liturgical season of Easter lasts for eight weeks. What would happen if we lived the Easter season with as much fervor as we live Lent? Your question gives us a chance to reflect on this.

The Color of Easter

Every liturgical season has its color – both physically (violent for Lent, white for Easter, for example, as shown in the sacred vestments used for Mass), but also spiritually. Trying to echo in our own spiritual lives the color of the seasons is a wise practice. For the saints, it happens almost without thinking – they are simply in tune with the spiritual rhythms of the Church. For the rest of us, a concerted effort can help.

The color of Easter is joy, the joy of the definitive victory. Christ has taken all sin and evil into his own soul, in a sense, and done away with it. God’s mercy has shown itself infinitely stronger than the devil’s poison. This is the message so beautifully expressed in the Easter Sequence, sung before the Gospel is read for the Mass of Our Lord’s Resurrection.

What can we do to color our spiritual lives with Easter joy during this liturgical season? I will offer three suggestions, but I also invite our readers to share their own personal and family traditions, and any experiences that have helped them make this season fruitful for growing in holiness.

Liturgical Connection

First, stay connected to the liturgy. The readings for daily Mass during Easter take us on an exciting journey through the Last Supper discourse and through the amazing and frightening experience of the early Church. We should spend time reading commentaries about these biblical passages, meditating on them, and allowing God to speak to our hearts through them. The main message of the liturgical readings throughout Easter is that Christ is still among us, even after his Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension, and he is among us precisely through his Church. I always find it deeply encouraging to read a book or two about the history of the Church, or about the life of a saint, during Easter. It reminds me that my own Christian journey is a part of a much bigger story, and that I am not alone in my defeats and victories.

Rejoice!

Second, find ways to rejoice. This time of year tends to be quite busy – especially if you have kids in school. Make a point of doing some things that you enjoy. Just as in Lent we denied ourselves some legitimate delights as a way to unite ourselves to Christ’s self-sacrifice, so during Easter we should intentionally enjoy the good things of life, as a way to unite ourselves to Christ’s victory and triumph. We always have a victory celebration when our team wins the championship – well, Jesus has won the eternal championship, and we are on his team; we need to celebrate that.

Obviously, I am not recommending that you dive into sinful pleasures, or that you over-indulge in self-centered activities. But I am recommending that we intentionally look for ways to rejoice, to enjoy God’s goodness such that joy overflows from our spirits, into our emotions, and even into our bodies. Why not make Sunday lunch a truly festive occasion for your family and friends every Sunday of Easter (different family members can be in charge of the menu each week)? Why not make a special trip or two to your favorite museum or take some extra time to enjoy your favorite music or a favorite author? Why not carve out some extra time during Easter for your whole family, or a few of you, to enjoy some activities that you haven’t had a chance to do for a long time? Why not reflect Easter joy in your wardrobe when you go to work (tastefully, of course)? If we surround these activities with a spiritual and prayerful intention – celebrating Christ’s victory – they become more than vacation activities; they becomes means of worship. God rejoices to see his children rejoice.

Spread the Light

Third, reach out. Jesus taught us that “there is more joy in giving than receiving” (Acts 20:35). Like the candlelight service during the Easter Vigil, we can share with others the light of Christ’s victory that we have received, and roll back the tattered shadows of the kingdom of darkness. Renewing our efforts to bring others closer to Christ, to help others who are in need – those close to us or those far away – can color our lives with Easter joy, if we season those efforts with prayer and faith. Christians should smile more during Easter, because true joy draws forth joy.

I hope these thoughts will inspire you to make some Easter resolutions. Why should Lent be the only time we make resolutions? God has graces in store for us this season, just as he did during Lent. We only need to keep our eyes peeled so that we don’t miss them.

What “Easter resolutions” have helped you in the past? Let us know!

Advent anxiety – What do I do? – Part I of III

Q: Dear Father John, I am looking forward to Advent and Christmas this year with a little bit of enthusiasm and a lot of anxiety. I know it should be the other way around: a lot of enthusiasm and a little bit of anxiety. What am I doing wrong? How can I reverse the proportion?

A: Progress on the path of holiness requires sincerity with God and sincerity with ourselves. How can we move forward if we aren’t honest with ourselves about the obstacles in our path? Your question shows you are being sincere. That’s good. That’s a reason for you to breathe a sigh of relief –the Holy Spirit is already guiding you from within. He will continue to do so. But since the subtext of your question touches issues that, I am certain, many of our readers are also dealing with, I would like to take two or three posts to address the issue of living Advent well.

Living Advent well requires, in the first place, refreshing our understanding about liturgical seasons in general, and the liturgical meaning of Advent and Christmas in particular.

Why God Invented the Liturgical Seasons

We are not angels. Angels are pure spirit; they live outside the limits of physics and biology. We human beings, though we are indeed spiritual creatures, develop our spiritual capacities in and through material realities. Among those material realities, time and space hold pride of place. And so, when God decided to redeem us, to lead us back into communion with himself after the disaster of original sin, he did so by sending his grace through the media of time and space. And this is still his method. The Church, enlivened and guided by the Holy Spirit, is earth’s spiritual rehab center. It administers the grace we need to recover from sin (original and personal) in doses that reach us through human, not angelic, means. The rhythm of the liturgical seasons arises from this remarkably humble, gentle, and realistic approach to salvation, an approach customized to our spiritual-material nature.

The liturgical seasons, then, are chances for us to receive new graces from God, graces that he puts in the air (so to speak) precisely for us. Each season is like a fresh start, a new opportunity to mature spiritually just a little bit more, as healthy trees mature through the steady and gentle transition of natural seasons. All we have to do to foster this spiritual growth is live each liturgical season with the attention of our heart on the primary aspects of God’s revelation that the season highlights. For Advent, this includes the three comings of Christ: his historical coming two thousand years ago, his present coming in the here-and-now of our lives, and his future coming at the end of history. These events are all interwoven through the liturgical readings, feasts, and traditions of the season. They reveal God’s goodness, wisdom, mercy, and power. They urge us to reform our lives so as to be ready to welcome the Lord. They inspire us to remember the bigger picture of salvation history, even as we stumble through the part of that picture comprised by our daily lives.

Turning our attention to those mysteries involves an attitudinal and a practical adjustment.

Adjusting Our Attitude

Attitudinally, we need to remind ourselves that his Advent is different from every other Advent that we have ever lived, ever. It is different because we are different. In the past year, we have changed. We have another year of life under our belts. Maybe it was a year full of successes, joys, and advances. Maybe it was a year full of failures and sins. Maybe it was a year of suffering and hardship. Whatever happened during the past year, it has affected us. We have more experience, more knowledge, and, we hope, a little more wisdom and a deeper love for God and neighbor. As a result, when we turn our attention once again to Advent, to the three comings of Christ, we will see something new, something different.

Jesus Christ is God. He is infinite beauty, power, goodness, and truth. We can never know him completely. He is an inexhaustible treasury of greatness. Because of our life experience during the past year, we are now ready to discover new facets of this treasure, new levels of meaning, wisdom, strength, and joy. God’s providence has been preparing us over this past year, so that we may now learn things about God and his plan of salvation that he couldn’t show us before, because we weren’t ready. All three of those comings of Christ have the same purpose: to reestablish and deepen our friendship with God. He is looking forward making that happen, to deepening our friendship with him, in these coming weeks of Advent.

Making a Practical Adjustment

Practically, the coming four weeks need to be different. During our daily God-time, the themes of our meditation and spiritual reading should speak to us of Advent. We should make sure to go to confession during these weeks. We should participate actively in some of the parish Advent activities – both the spiritual ones and the apostolic or service-oriented ones. And we should make sure that our family life and our home are brought into synch with the rhythm of the liturgical season. Instead of listing the myriad ways that can happen (decorating the house and yard with Christmas decorations gradually, throughout Advent; having a family Advent Calendar or Jesse Tree; listening to Christmas music starting right away in the first week of Advent; watching favorite Christmas movies as a family every Saturday night of Advent…), I would like to ask our readers to comment on Advent traditions that have been fruitful and helpful for them, so we can have an exchange of ideas. The important point is that we have to express our shift of spiritual attention in some material manifestation, if we want to live the season well. (This is why, for instance, the Church changes the colors of vestments and the hymns during Advent.) If you need some new ideas, you can browse through the Advent-themed comments and articles at www.FaithandFamilylive.com, and the Advent-themed products at this online store.

As you can see, the attitudinal and practical adjustments of Advent don’t have to take a lot of time. They are simply a refocusing of the attention of our hearts. We turn our souls towards the spiritual winds of Advent, to be refreshed by the graces they carry. Having reminded ourselves of the meaning of liturgical seasons in general and the season of Advent in particular, we are ready to address the core of your question: the challenges of Advent, which are the cause of your feelings of anxiety. There are two major difficulties. Will tackle them in our next posts, one at a time.

Yours in Christ, Father John Bartunek, LC, ThD