Easter

Spring Equinox and Easter

Just for a moment, at 10:06 pm tonight, March 19, 2024, darkness and light will be held in perfect balance. Equinox, meaning “equal night” in Latin, is when the sun is directly over the Earth’s equator, causing day and night to be equal moments. In the northern hemisphere, where I live, we will begin to have longer days with more sunshine and hours of light. As the earth continues moving around the sun, the position of the sunrise and sunset will change quickly, and the balance between night and day will not last long.

Indeed, an apt metaphor for the balance we seek in our daily lives. It is good to remember that even in the cosmos there is either more dark or more light. This is life.

During pre-Christian Europe, the pagan goddess, Ostara, was celebrated during the spring equinox. She was honored for renewal, rebirth, fertility, balance, and the coming of spring. In Western Christian churches, Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox. The cosmic connection between spring equinox and Easter, the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus, cannot be missed–they follow the rhythm of nature and point to more light, either literally or through Christ.

I have been feeling some guilt this Lent season. St. Benedict devotes an entire chapter to observing Lent with advice for monks. He writes, “Let each one deny himself some food, drink, sleep, needless talking and idle jesting, and look forward to holy Easter with joy and spiritual longing (RB 49: 7).” I have not made any grand gestures of sacrifice, quite the opposite. During my spring break from school, which occurs during Lent, we tend to travel out of state to see our daughter and son-in-law, we wine and dine, gather with friends and family, and generally celebrate time on vacation. Return from spring break marks the beginning of the last quarter, or nine weeks, of school when teachers begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

My Lent intention is to “hold it all”– to live as prayerfully, joyfully, playfully, gratefully, mindfully, and soulfully as possible while balancing my school and home life. Striking a perfect balance in one’s life is more of an ideal than a reality. The celebrations of the liturgical and astronomical calendar are reminders that our spiritual longings can be met by following the rhythms of nature. Each season we have another opportunity to set new intentions and to honor them in sacred ritual. The Benedictine idea of balance comes from the monk’s life, moving between prayer and work, ora et labora. So, too, do those who live as “monks in the world” seek this balance–sometimes there is more work, less prayer–but both are seen as necessary, sacred, and part of the whole.

“Blessed are you, spring, season of resurrection, sacrament of promise. Like Jesus you rise up out of the darkness, leaving around you a wake of new life.
Blessed are you, spring, season of hope and renewal. Wordless poem about all within us that can die. Each year you amaze us with the miracle of returning life.”
-Excerpt from A Spring Blessing in The Circle of Life: The Heart’s Journey Through the Seasons by Joyce Rupp & Macrina Wiederkehr

More on Balance and Being Benedictine:

Mindfulness and a Blue Heron
Enough: I Can Never Know It All

Our Life is a Balance

March 19, 2024 6

Mystery and History: Holy Days and Crane Calling

Between sunset on Holy Saturday evening and sunrise on Easter Sunday, the Easter Vigil is celebrated. I have spent the Holy Days, the three days leading up to Easter, with the Benedictine monks in Schuyler many times. The prayers and chants are the most beautiful of the liturgical year.

The Easter Vigil readings begin with the Book of Genesis—the story of creation when heaven and earth, darkness and light, water and sky, land, plants, animals, birds, fish, and humans were created—and continue through New Testament readings. Between each of the several readings is a Psalm that is sung by cantor and congregation.

This year I spent the Holy Days listening to a different kind of song, the call of the Sandhill Crane. I missed the familiar chants of the monks, participating virtually when possible, but the experience of observing the oldest living birds feasting in the fields and wetlands of Nebraska was likewise a sacred experience.

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April 4, 2021 0

Easter: Embracing Light and Darkness

“We love to think of Easter as the feast of dazzling light. We get up on Easter Sunday morning knowing that the sorrow of Good Friday is finally ended… that Jesus is vindicated, that the faith of the disciples is confirmed for all to see, and that everyone lived happily ever after. We love fairy tales. Unfortunately, Easter is not one of them.” (Joan Chittister)

During the Holy Triduum, we remember the events leading up to Easter. Each Holy Day is significant to the fullness of Jesus’ story—his life, death, and resurrection. Jesus’ life was full of joy—learning, teaching, helping others, growing in his authentic identity, and embracing his essence—but, also, as the Gospel of John poignantly states, “Jesus wept.” Even Jesus could not escape his own suffering—the death of a friend, concern for political and religious corruption, the betrayal of his disciples, his own physical persecution, and, finally, his fear of abandonment, that he had been forgotten by God and everyone. No doubt about it, Jesus experienced both joy and suffering.

Jesus’ life is an archetype for our own spiritual journey. There is nothing that happens in our lives that Jesus didn’t also experience. When we live out our own Good Fridays, mini-deaths that bring us face to face with darkness, we know we are not alone. We may feel betrayed by loved ones, blamed for problems we didn’t create, forsaken by those we trust. We grieve the loss of loved ones and lament our own mistakes. We are depressed or sad.

Our Holy Saturday is a time of waiting, enduring or resting, perhaps a respite from problems, a time when we can separate from our pain for moments, even days at a time. In the tomb, we wait for healing. Perhaps, we allow others to mourn with us and wait with us in hope. Our waiting is a gray space of in-between.

This darkness is not what we want—and anytime we experience something unwanted, or conversely don’t get what we do want, we live in some shade of darkness. Truth be told, we simply want peace and joy. We don’t want to be patient, to feel bad, to hurt. There are times when we cling to the darkness and choose to stay in a place of suffering, but we can both honor the darkness while looking towards a glimmer of light, to Easter. Continue reading “Easter: Embracing Light and Darkness” →

April 12, 2020 2

A Story Behind Everything

“However well satisfied you are with your own skill or intelligence,
never forget how much there is that remains unknown to you.”
-Imitation of Christ, Thomas à Kempis

There’s so much we don’t know, so much we don’t see, so much we can’t understand. There is a story behind everything.

On a recent country drive, I stumbled upon a cemetery I had never seen before. It was an old cemetery surrounded by, likely, the original iron fence and arched gate.

I find the old gate breathtaking: the rust over the exquisite spirals and twists on the finials and posts; the contrast of brown and green grasses; the juxtaposition of birth and death, new and old, all at once. I wonder: How many people have passed through that gate? How many tears shed at the graves of loved ones? I wonder when flowers were last placed on a grave.

The gate remains locked now, and instead, a simpler entrance and a few graveled paths intersect to help visitors find their beloved. Only symbolic now, the fence and gate remain part of this sacred site and its story.

I continue my journey for miles down a country road, passing no houses, or people, or other cars–truly, a solitary journey. In a wooded area, I notice several old vehicles behind the limbs and brush, so easily missed that I turned around at the next intersection to drive by again. Taking a closer look from many angles and directions, I photographed the old truck. I wondered when it’s dying day had come and it was left to become part of the landscape. When had it last been driven to town? How many children had ridden in the back of the truck, wind blowing in their hair, or perhaps more recently, used it as a jungle gym? Continue reading “A Story Behind Everything” →

April 13, 2018 2

Easter of Light… and Darkness

April 8, 2018 0

Earthquake and Easter go together

Homily for the Easter Vigil 2017 at Christ the King Priory/St. Benedict Center, Prior Fr. Joel Macul OSB

Vigil readings: Gn 1:–2:2 • Gn 22:1–18 • Ex 14:15–15:1 • Is 54:5–14 • Is 55:1–11 • Bar 3:9–15 • Ez 36:16–28 • Rom 6:3–11 • Mt 28:1–10

Earthquake! Earthquake and Easter go together today. Most of us could probably use a little earthquake right now to wake us up and get our attention. We have been sitting and listening for a long time. ….God is so full of surprises. Dawn comes, a new day and what do we feel? An earthquake. Everything is splitting open, the old is collapsing, and the new is stepping out. The sound of the earthquake and stones rolling away, that is the announcement of Easter this year. But it is a new day, a new creation, the old has passed. After the earthquake, we cannot go back. Life is not the same, for Jesus, for the women, for disciples. Dare I say, for us also?

The readings we have just heard are like photos in a family or community album. Each year on this night we gather to sit down and look at these pictures. We gather here to listen to the stories and poems about God’s ways in our faith community’s story. We sit and listen to the stories and words of the prophets and apostles. Every time we look at a family or community photo album, the pictures remind someone of another story, of another member of the family and community. Sometimes the stories are the same, sometimes they are not. A new memory is added. It is like that with the words and rituals of this Easter Vigil. Each year the same words are read but each year they sound new and different. Something in them is heard for the first time. Why? Because each year we have grown and experienced another piece of life since the hearing last Easter. This year a particular word hits us; it makes sense, more sense than ever before. God is penetrating into our hearts ever more deeply. Each year we hear these words and each year we become these words more and more. Or so we hope.

Continue reading “Earthquake and Easter go together” →

April 16, 2017 0