Peace and Happiness this Easter Season!
Dear St. Raphaelites and Friends!
I’m writing this before Holy week and the journey of the Triduum through to Easter Sunday, the feast of Christ’s resurrection, has not yet happened! I learnt in Durham last year that the Venerable Bede, whose remains are in Durham Cathedral, wrote that the word Easter comes from the Anglo Saxon spring goddess, Eostre, and was applied to the principal Christian festival of the year. Faith in Jesus’ resurrection on the Sunday or third day following his crucifixion is at the heart of Christian belief around the world, but in the northern hemisphere, the experience of springtime is set next to the ancient stories of deliverance and the proclamation of the risen Christ. Easter occurs on the first Sunday after the full moon on or after the vernal equinox, always falling between Mar. 22 and Apr. 25. We follow Jewish custom by beginning the feast at sunset on Easter Eve with the Great Vigil of Easter. I encourage you all to participate as far as you are able in Holy Week. I know that to treat those days as a pilgrimage towards the joy of the resurrection can be so encouraging and enlightening for our life and faith.
But then there is the 50 Days of the Easter Season. In South Africa, I came across the Via Lucis, the
Stations of Light. This is a spiritual journey with Jesus that takes us through 14 of the events of his
post-resurrection life on earth from all four of the Gospels. It is a path of transforming joy, almost
like the Stations of the Cross with the Spirit of Life illuminating the Way differently. They say that
these stations were discovered in the Catacombs of St. Callistus in Rome, and particularly suited to use during the weekdays of the Easter Octave (the week following Easter Sunday, that the Eastern Church calls “Bright Week”), and throughout the Easter Season. Although known as a spiritual practice from the 1st century, it has been gathered into a new devotion in recent decades, beginning with the story of the Resurrection and following through to Pentecost. I have some small guides to the Via Lucis if any of you are interested to do more than follow the lectionary readings of the season and Sunday sermons during the Easter Season.
Why intentionally follow a practice of prayer and meditation during any of our Church seasons? Because it is a clear way to honor Jesus’ call to follow him. Each season of our church calendar has a depth of learning for us, whether we have attended church our whole lives or just a few weeks. Faith is dynamic, the Spirit of God is at work in the world, new insights keep our love for our neighbors and enemies alive in us. Contemplative prayer lives that follow the church seasons can steady and balance us, rather than simply focus us on national holiday & Hallmark celebrations. We can come to see those holidays as spiritual markers for our lives. Times to enjoy peace and happiness, love and friendship, family bonds, compassion, respect for one another and for the Sacred. Maybe opening ourselves to new journeys like those which the church seasons offer us may awaken us to blessing, gratitude, a new vision of ourselves and possibly even imagine a new way of being in the world.
And maybe that’s what we and the whole world need right now!
With love,
Rev Helen