Easter as a Journey
Not just a feast but a way of life
Lent is often experienced as an intense period—a time for real commitment, conversion, and purification. Fasting, prayer, and acts of charity are all directed towards inner renewal. Yet, once Easter arrives, many of us find ourselves reverting to old habits. The desire for self-improvement wanes, spiritual fervour diminishes, and we risk slipping back into routine and mediocrity.
I recall a parishioner once confiding in me: "The Easter Season is boring!" At the time, this statement struck me, but it unfortunately reflects a quite common feeling: after the rigours of Lent, Easter can seem like a conclusion, a milestone achieved that quickly ceases to inspire or guide our lives.
A Journey That Never Ceases
However, Easter is far from a mere festivity to be celebrated and then set aside. It is the beating heart of our faith, the starting point for a renewed existence. The resurrection of Christ is not an event to be commemorated once a year, but a living reality that calls us to daily transformation.
As believers, we are never truly "outside" the Paschal Triduum. Every moment of our lives, in every season of the year, we can enter into the mystery of Christ's passion, death, and resurrection, which we begin to relive tomorrow evening with the Mass of the Lord's Supper. This is well expressed in a reflection from Pope Francis's latest encyclical, Dilexit Nos:
"It is not possible to sever the past completely from the present, however difficult our minds find this to grasp. The Gospel, in all its richness, was written not only for our prayerful meditation, but also to enable us to experience its reality in our works of love and in our interior life. This is certainly the case with regard to the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection. The temporal distinctions that our minds employ appear incapable of embracing the fullness of this experience of faith, which is the basis both of our union with Christ in his suffering and of the strength, consolation and friendship that we enjoy with him in his risen life." (DN 156)
We live in time, but God's grace is not confined by our temporal categories. The death and resurrection of Christ are not events locked in the past to be commemorated, but a reality that renews itself in the present, transforming our existence. And this is true not just during Lent!
United with the Risen Christ in Light and Trial
This truth translates into a concrete call: to live each day in the light of the resurrection, without forgetting that being with Christ also means sharing in His cross. As we read further in Dilexit Nos:
"In a word, the risen Lord, by the working of his grace, mysteriously unites us to his passion. The hearts of the faithful, who experience the joy of the resurrection, yet at the same time desire to share in the Lord’s passion, understand this. They desire to share in his sufferings by offering him the sufferings, the struggles, the disappointments and the fears that are part of their own lives. Nor do they experience this as isolated individuals, since their sufferings are also a participation in the suffering of the mystical Body of Christ, the holy pilgrim People of God, which shares in the passion of Christ in every time and place." (DN 157)
Being Christian means embracing this tension: rejoicing in the resurrection, yet also bearing the cross with Christ. This is not merely a balance between moments of joy and trial, but a profound union with the Lord, transforming every hardship into an offering and every suffering into an opportunity for grace.
With this reflection, we, Br Richard and Br Giovanni, wish you a very Happy and Blessed Easter!
May your following of Christ not end with the end of Lent or the Easter meal, but deepen each day, in the joy of the resurrection and the commitment to spread the Kingdom of God.
Christ is risen! Yes, He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
Image: Fra Angelico, Christ in Limbo (1141-42) from Wikipedia Commons
