We have spent weeks doing Lent. Is it possible that we can spend even one week doing Easter? Can we remember that there is such a thing as the season of Easter, the Great Fifty Days that lead us all the way to Pentecost?
I’m going to try to focus on E-A-S-T-E-R, in various ways for as much of this season as I can effectively. Christians are supposed to be an Easter people—yet we tend to circle back around to our unending Lent-like lives: the failures, bad habits, wounds, trials, sins, weaknesses, and on and on.
So, I begin our Easter Season with these questions. Would love to hear from you!
- What does being an Easter people, or person, mean to you?
- What aspects of the Easter event—the Resurrection—are most difficult for you to hold in your heart consistently?
- What aspects of the Easter event have entered your life and thoughts and dreams on a much more regular basis?
For several years I was just going through the motions during Lent. This Lenten season was different because my father became ill and my mom’s sister who has been really sick is now in hospice care. These two experiences renewed my hope in the Resurrection and that what we experience in this life is not the end. Our reward is not here. As Easter people we have something to look forward to and to strive for.
To be an ‘Easter Person’ is to have hope. Sometimes, that is not easy. I see that I have to develop new habits to build hope. I see that it will take practice. I have to catch myself. I see that when times are tough, if I let go and turn immediately to God for help in prayer, I feel the joy of God’s presence again and hope is restored. One of my favourite passages from scripture is Jesus’ encounter with the disciples on the road to Emmaus. I like to meditate on that scene particularly at this time of year. Sometimes, in the morning as I look at the tasks for the day ahead, I remember someone’s advice; that we ask ourselves; ‘is there is even one person I can help today even in a small way?’ However small, it can make a difference.
VInita, I love your articles and this Easter and Lent I have been encouraged that there is MORE that God wants to give me/us and if I/we can only follow his guide and forget about leading. Easter is the perfect time to look, listen and follow with trust and faith into the unknown, but always loving opportunities God presents.
I had a delivery of food from a local supermarket on Easter Monday
In the delivery was an Easter cake which i told the young man that i had the same cake delivered to my Godson the two days before and it cost thirteen pounds now it had been reduced to three pounds
He in all innocence said that’s because Easter is over !!! I told him Easter lasts for fifty days .
Christ is risen Alleluia !!!!
Enjoy your Easter cake…all 3 pounds (weight & cost!!) 😉
To live as an Easter person means I celebrate the freedom Christ gained for me by his sacrifice on the cross. Taking a week of Easter break following Resurrection Sunday allows me to release myself from ordinary duties to contemplate and celebrate the joy of Easter. This freedom helps to propel me into a season, if not a year, of acknowledging the unburdened life I live because of the hope resulting from my God raising his son. My Messiah lives and now I, too, am alive forever. Praise God!
For me being an Easter person means that because Jesus died for me and arose again, I too can rise again. Every time I fall. Every time I fail. Because I have been saved I can rise again and make a new start.
Being an ‘Easter’ people, for me, is truly believing in a life after death. Believing that death is not the end of our story, just as it wasn’t for Jesus. I know that death, despite its difficulties, sadness, importance & ending of many things, is the death of the human body. The soul moves on to Heaven or a place where God is. Death & suffering are of this world, but our own resurrection is of a home with God. I’ve met people who struggle with death because they have no belief of any type of afterlife (resurrection) & I feel badly for them. A belief that the goal of my life is to live with God forever helps me survive life’s Good Fridays until our own Easter morning arrives.
Ignatius of Loyola ,in his Spiritual Exercises, provides us with rich wisdom to ponder on the Resurrection of Jesus and the gifts of hope and freedom.
The Resurrection is a proclamation that Jesus is alive and present with us. death has been conquered.
Death opens the way to eternal life. Jesus gives witness to God’s faithfulness even in death.
We need not be afraid of death since it is not the end, but the beginning of eternal life.
Resurrection gives meaning to suffering and death as a way to salvation.
Jesus’ Resurrection affirms the value of the human person and the world in which we live. Jesus was raised as a whole person—body and soul. Jesus did not take on human flesh and then discard it. Jesus retained his whole humanity yet remained fully divine.
This world is a gift of an all-loving God. Our faith in the Resurrection assures us that everything of beauty and love and creativity lasts forever.
Because of the resurrection, we are free to receive the gifts of God.
Because of the resurrection, we are free to take joy in life—the good days, the bad days, and everything in between.
Because of the resurrection, we are free to grow and evolve as the wondrous humans God created us to be.
I too find it hard to be an “Easter” person. What does give me hope is that Jesus’ resurrection shows us that God can bring goodness out of evil.
Being Easter People means walking moment by moment with the Risen Christ, knowing His indwelling Presence empowering and enabling us, and forgiving and releasing us at every turn.It means remembering and living the truth that, just as he foretold Peter’s betrayal and yet never stopped loving, trusting and forgiving him and calling him to service, so that truth applies to me and to you and to us all.
Easter – a sign of hope. It’s daily rising and looking forward to rise again and again.
I read Matt Kelly’s Rediscover Jesus through Lent. I was struck by his great “What If” question. What if it’s all true, the story is real and Jesus/God really did die and rise for me? That’s what Easter people means to me. The awe and wonder, what if it’s all true. Do we as a people really, REALLY, believe it? If we did we’d be dancing in the streets. Wow Jesus, really, for me! Hallelujah!
Easter for me means new life, a new chance, a new beginning. A resurrection from the dead, a discarding of the old life and being made alive with Jesus by my side.
YES! We are an EASTER people. While Lent is valuable in reminding us that we are sinners and in building a contrite heart we need to remember more often that Jesus already died and rose to save us. We are already saved we should be filled with joy. I know many people who say they are more comfortable with Lent than Easter, it’s easier to wallow in self-pity than to be joyful. How many people spend more time complaining to others than sharing their joy. Lent is easy, Lent is human-made, Easter is hard, Easter is God-made.
Thank you Vinita for another beautiful post. I am very grateful my being raised in Franciscan Spirituality and emphasis on the God of love, mercy and forgiveness as an emphasis, instead of weakness, sinfulness and unworthiness in the human condition which seemed to put all the emphasis on each person trying to do all they could to be saved! Just this week Sr Chris Koellhoffer, IHM, a Living Faith writer had a face book post. Which said:
In the original Aramaic of Jesus ‘to be saved’ was ‘to be made alive’ Cynthia Bourgeault.
This is how I view the Joy of Easter and resurrection. We too are given New Life to life fully, forgive freely, sharing fully with others…going out in mission to others sharing what we have received.
A year or two ago you had a video which has stayed with me, “Are you brave enough for Resurrection?” I loved it and played it over and over! I think I played it so often I know I wrote the whole thing out and now cannot find it. Hopefully it will turn up…The message as I recall was are we going to live the freedom of the daughters and sons of God or remain in the bondage of what keeps us in our tombs or the unfreedoms in our life. To live Resurrection is to be an Easter person!
What does being an “Easter” people, or person, mean to you? Being an “Easter” people means we are truly alive, alive not just in a physical sense, but alive in an “Easter” sense to all the reality and possibilities of resurrected, eternal life in Christ. No longer are we chained down to a mere earthly existence. With the stone, there rolled away all that limited creation. No longer do we drag ourselves reluctantly forward, dreary day after dreary day towards an inevitable nothingness in death. Through, with and in Christ, life is abundant and joyous, to be cherished through our last breathing moment to our first immortal moment. It is this joy, this exuberance, this overwhelming radiance in the Risen Christ that makes us “Easter People.”
What aspects of the Easter event—the Resurrection—are most difficult for you to hold in your heart consistently? Just as I cannot live at the apex of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, basking in continual self-actualization, without being tumbled from my pedestal by a grumbling stomach, neither can I continually maintain outwardly exuberant joy in the face of the nightly news or the latest prayer request for cancer. Holding it in my heart is a achievement of incredible grace and self-surrender to the unfathomable yet unconditional love of God manifested in his ever-present indwelling and divine providence.
What aspects of the Easter event have entered your life and thoughts and dreams on a much more regular basis? Before the monstrance: “Notice that he is looking at you lovingly and humbly.” Saint Teresa of Avila