I've been meaning to get a blog post up for a few weeks now about the glorious liturgical feasts we've since celebrated/will celebrate, but with my crazy schedule, I've had more time to accumulate the thoughts about them and less to get them typed up and published. It's a good thing this isn't a job for me, or I'd be well past my deadline, but I digress. Many Catholics, Christians of other denominations, and even irreligious are easily excited about the amazing feasts of Christmas and Easter. For believers, who wouldn't be overjoyed at the celebration of Our Lord Jesus Christ's birth and Resurrection, respectively? I mean, He came down to earth, lived through vulnerability to the human experiences of hunger, thirst, heat, chill, temptation, and then, at the end of it all, suffered the death we deserved, because only One Who is God could worthily take away sin, but only a human being could suffer and die. By that human experience, we are shown we are not alone. By that death, our death is conquered. By that rising, we are restored to new life. Being no great theological scholar within the Church, I would still like to share some perspectives I've pieced together from homilies I've heard and theologians I respect greatly.
As we get later into the Easter Season, the focus shifts from the initial joy and wonder of Jesus rising from the dead. After weeks of our triumphant cry, "Christ is risen! Alleluia," we begin to get the sense that there is something more coming, hinting toward the Ascension on the fortieth day. What an amazing experience that must have been for the Apostles, as they witnessed Him returning, body and soul, to the Father in Heaven. What jubilation must have occurred in Heaven among the angels as Jesus returned from His mission, triumphant (thank you, Father Carroll for that perspective). When the Apostles' initial wonder faded, no doubt a certain degree of fear began to creep in. They saw great miracles before Jesus' death, yet scattered when things got tough. It's easy to stay brave when you can see an obvious sign of the Lord's presence with you. Yet, Jesus knew their hearts, and He had planned for it well in advance, promising them another Advocate. This Advocate arrived ten days later at Pentecost. What a great culmination of the Easter Season! And after that day, when the Apostles preached the Good News to the people and baptized 3,000 of them, they sat back and congratulated themselves on the great job they did, and that was the end of the story, right? Wrong!
After the arrival of the Holy Spirit, the Apostles fulfilled the command to the best of their abilities and beyond thanks to the grace God gave them to go out and preach the Gospel. We hear the story year after year, celebrate fifty days with glorious Alleluias constantly on our lips (thank you, Monsignor Ryan), and then what? What do we do with that message? Slip into Ordinary Time with just a vague memory of it? I think the liturgical colors may give us a little bit of an answer. Usually, throughout the major feasts of the Church, the vestments are white, yet Pentecost Sunday is red. Why? True, the Acts of the Apostles does tell us the Holy Spirit descended like tongues as of fire, and fire can be red, but at what other times does the priest wear red? Palm Sunday, Good Friday, feasts of certain martyrs, times when blood was shed, the liturgical color is red. I'm not qualified to say whether this was intentional or not, but Jesus promised us persecutions for His Name. He practically guaranteed the Apostles they would be called almost entirely, with the exception of John, to lay down their lives for Him, to shed their blood. We have the same call, to teach the truth of Christ, even at the cost of our own blood. Nowadays, we're often reduced to silence in the western world if someone so much as gives us a funny look for talking about Christ, especially on the moral issues. I've been called a religious extremist, a bigot, a misogynist and many other things for my faith in Jesus, and that's treated as a big thing. Seriously? Sticks and stones, folks. I'm a wimp of the Faith compared to the modern day martyrs in the Middle East and in godless regimes like China and North Korea. I ask for their prayers for me, so weak in my resolve here, because it will get worse than name calling and funny looks here, guaranteed.
There's much more to say, but while blogging is a great way to get a message out, I would be a hypocrite to spend so much time doing that while not attending to my duties to my family. The life of a disciple of Christ is one of service, and as a husband and father, I am bound to serve my family. After all, to give a taste of my next blog post, family is one of the greatest ways in which we begin to understand the nature of God. Until then, know that, in the words of St. Augustine, later reemphasized by Pope St. John Paul II, "We are an Easter people, and 'Alleluia' is our song." This does not cease to be true just because the Easter Season is over. Alleluia! Alleluia!
No comments:
Post a Comment