Easter and our resurrection story
When I was a child, I was aware of family values and spiritual commitment. The idea of attending Mass only at Easter time was compared to being on the edge of a cliff. If you were not careful, you could fall to your destruction. Church commitment meant much more than making your Easter duty.
There is a reflection entitled “The Seasons of Life” that challenges us to a wider discernment in the Church’s liturgical seasons. Easter is just one season.
The story goes that there was a man who had four sons. He wanted his sons to learn to not judge things too quickly. So he sent them each on a quest, in turn, to go and look at a pear tree that was a great distance away.
The first son went in the winter, the second in the spring, the third in summer, and the youngest son in the fall. When they had all gone and come back, he called them together to describe what they had seen.
he first son said that the tree was ugly, bent, and twisted. The second son said no – it was covered with green buds and full of promise. The third son disagreed. He said it was laden with blossoms that smelled so sweet and looked so beautiful, it was the most graceful thing he had ever seen. The last son disagreed with all of them. He said it was ripe and drooping with fruit, full of life and fulfillment.
The man then explained to his sons that they were all right, because they had each seen but one season in the tree’s life. He told them that you cannot judge a tree, or a person, by only one season, and that the essence of who they are can only be measured at the end, when all the seasons are up.
Spiritual enrichment does not come from taking in one season of the liturgical year. Advent and Christmas lead us to Lent and Easter. The culmination of Pentecost, Trinity Sunday and Corpus Christi can fulfill a broad spiritual growth.
Similarly, the Master’s touch during our lifetime of growth takes us through stages that ultimately can result in a work of eternal beauty and substance. Let me illustrate with a metaphor I experienced more than imagined.
Some years ago my wife and I restored an oak stairway, banister and floor area. The once fashionable carpet and the tiles under it disappeared. As the incredible crud of carpet glue, paint, and wood filler were removed, the hint of beauty appeared.
But I was not prepared for the revelation of full restoration. As I ascended the fourteen steps applying the stain and varathane, I thought of the Stations of the Cross, and I became excited by the beauty of the transformation before me.
As the lustre and glow were coming to life in the quarter oak, I noticed that the scars and sanding marks, the knots and bruises of seventy some years of the life of this house had not disappeared but were gloriously transformed.
It struck me that after the Resurrection, a gloriously transformed Christ still bears the scars and wounds that show his great love for us. In the hands of the Creator God, the artist who transforms us, all of the scars, bruises and suffering of our lives will someday be gloriously transformed.
In the resurrection, the old wood of our lives will hardly be recognizable. As my wife remarked after the second coat of varathane, “Everything shows up after the finish is applied.”
(598 words)
