Eastertide

On Easter Sunday we gather as a community of faith to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus. Our worship is filled with festive alleluias, and songs of praise and thanksgiving. Even nature seems to join in the celebration as signs of new life surround us. There are the first flowers of Spring pushing their heads above ground, the smell of new leaves on the trees, the song of birds filling the air, the warm breezes signaling the coming of bright days and pleasant nights. Drawn into the joy of Easter and the beauty of new life, we tend to forget what has gone before. Our memories of the gray winter days and long cold nights fade as we see signs of new life and know again the hope of Jesus' resurrection. Yet Easter is a celebration of life coming out of death, of hope arising in the face of suffering and struggle. The joy of Easter is having come through the darkness of Good Friday and emptiness of Holy Saturday.

It is believing that from suffering and death can come new life. This interplay of death and life is a mystery that we all experience in our daily lives. We are all familiar with times of darkness as well as times of light. We have experienced both the death of a loved one and birth of a child. We have felt the fear around the impending surgery of a family member and the joy of knowing that someone is recovering from a serous illness. We know the anguish when a loved one has been injured in an accident and the gratitude that wells up in us when someone who struggles with an addiction can celebrate a year of sobriety. Times of depression, experienced like a dark cloud hanging over us, weigh heavily upon us and times of hope and expectation fill us with energy and new dreams and hopes.

Maria Tasto, OSB. Easter: The Interplay of Life and Death.

Image: Resurrection by Solomon RAJ, India
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