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Lent to Easter -- Winter to Spring
During this season of Lent, I’m reminded that the word “Lent” comes from the Old World “lengten,” – which describes the gradual “lengthening of daylight”. All of us experience the difference between the long dark evenings of winter and then the increased hours of daylight that we receive as we move into spring. It’s in spring that we anticipate new beginnings and a new sense of possibility.
We are looking forward to Easter and spring with all the hope that accompanies the liturgical season and the natural season – both times during which we celebrate resurrection and new life. The Paschal Mystery is reflected so clearly in the “nature of things” – of all created life. It reminds us of continuity and wholeness: cross AND resurrection, winter, AND spring.
We might prefer the light of Easter to the dark of Lent, but just as some plants need the season of winter to bring forth new life in spring, joy does not exist for us without a context of challenges and suffering. We know sadness in our own lives and are very much aware of great sorrows of injustice, illness, and suffering in the world about us. None of these experiences are causes for joy. But every time we win even a small victory over a physical, mental, or spiritual obstacle, a smile opens in our hearts, and we are touched by joy. Some of us might live a generally peaceful life, but we notice joy most frequently when we, or anyone we know even remotely, overcomes some form of darkness, no matter for how brief a period, or how small the triumph might appear to be in someone else’s eyes.
Easter is not the defeat of Lent but represents the conquest of the various forms of darkness that threaten or deaden our hearts. Lent is a positive time for coming to terms with one or more of the dark aspects of our lives, whether they are of our own initiation or of others. Easter illumination is brighter and more joyful for us to the degree that, during Lent, we have reflected on the challenges to life that exist within us and about us. Easter is as personal for us as we are willing to admit. All of the decisions we make, all of our accomplishments and changes of attitude that elicit joy are not “things,” but experiences, and are as spiritual as is love. Many of our experiences of life that move from a sense of winter into that of spring are implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, expressions of our companionship with Jesus Christ, who was as dead as a tree that has been uprooted from the ground but is more alive now than we and all the rest of creation.
As we transition this year from Lent to Easter and Winter to Spring may your heart be open to the joy that each one can bring into our lives. Happy Spring! Happy Easter.
(Insights from Fr. Randy Roche, Loyola Marymount University)
Preview Sheet 2023-2024
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