THIS AND THAT:
FIFTY DAYS OF CELEBRATION FROM EASTER TO PENTECOST
We take a moment to wish all those in our parish family, and those visiting with us on this glorious and festive day, a blessed Easter.
It has been said that the human capacity for festivity arises from the ability to affirm all creation as good – from the ability to embrace, in one resounding “yes,” the length and breath, the heights and depths of our experience in and of this world. We see it in opening of our windows to let in some of the refreshing spring air. We see it in the first crocuses and forsythia sprouting through the soil, after a long cold frozen winter. We hear it the poignant descant of an oboe rising above a steady pulse sounded by an orchestra. We hear it in the delighted squeals of a child as its face is licked by the moist tongue and hot breath of a new puppy. We can hear it in the contented, prayerful whispers of an elderly woman – full of love, grace and years – as she prepares to pass through death to the other side of life, with quiet courage and dignity.
Saying “yes” to all of life, letting all of it in – that is festivity’s sustaining source. But there too is the rub. If the truth be known, few of us can say “yes” to anything for very long. We live, after all, in an intensely mobile culture of fast food, faster cars, disposable diapers and planned obsolescence. We know well the distinction between eating and dining, yet have little time or patience for the latter. Andy Warhol once quipped that our greatest goal is to be famous for fifteen minutes.
Have you ever noticed that at parties we do not carry on conversations, instead we “posture,” that is, we repeat to one another bits and pieces of dialogue from movies, beer commercials, sitcoms, or interviews with sports’ celebrities. Is it any small wonder that many in our society feel so isolated and so lonely. They are unable to connect; they are so incapable of forming relationships that last very long. It is no revelation then, that as individuals we find ourselves increasingly bored, angry, aggressive, and violent. Is it that we’re enraged and terrified by the awful emptiness that seems to stretch in every direction around us?
Given such cultural conditioning, the Christian celebration of what our tradition, as Roman Catholics, calls “the blessed Pentecost” will strike many in our families and circles of friends as mad indeed. For today – Easter Sunday – we begin the celebration of fifty days of immersing ourselves in the Paschal Mystery! Fifty days of surrendering in joyful faith and committed love as the Spirit of God takes possession of our lives! Fifty days of what we call “mystagogy,” namely, of walking with the newly initiated of the Rite of Christian Initiation ever more deeply into the baptismal mysteries of death and resurrection. Good heavens; what an order that will be!
Perhaps one reason why such a prolonged celebration of the fifty days from Easter until Pentecost strikes us as difficult – if not downright absurd – is that we tend to link feasts and holidays with mindless hoopla. “Party time,” for many, is our, or at least their, invitation to obliterate consciousness, to “get wasted,” to “veg out,” to forget, or to become violent by getting embroiled in violent mob response following a lost championship or we hate the visiting team.
But a season of Christian festival is precisely the opposite. It is a time of intensified consciousness, finely turned awareness, awakened memory. The great fifty days of Pentecost are not an unwelcome, unrealistic, obligation to “party on,” even if we don’t feel like it, but instead an invitation to explore more deeply what one writer has called “the weather of the heart.” It is a time to awaken our memory of God’s presence and power in our lives, to look more closely at all the rich and varied textures of creation. In short, the fifty days from Easter to Pentecost is a season for learning how to speak a full-throated “yes” in a culture that wants to keep on saying “no.”
Fondly,
Father Nicholas
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment