Easter Sunday
Maybe it was the phone call from a friend who mentioned how wonderful it was to be able to share a meal with her extended family again, even though their tables were separated by plexiglass and the music in the restaurant was too loud, that caused me to notice the phrase in the first reading of Easter Sunday: “we… ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead” (Acts 10:41)
The disciples and Mary Magdalene did not recognize him immediately. In the gospel, Mary thinks she is talking to the gardener until he speaks her name in love and opens her heart and eyes to see him. The disciples on the road to Emmaus had their eyes opened and only recognized him when he broke bread with them.
During this year-long Lent of a pandemic, we have been starved of so many ordinary, everyday things that we took for granted: family celebrations, hugs, visits, the ability to celebrate together the death of a loved one, etc. How do we celebrate Easter joy in such a time which is not over yet although, with vaccines, there seems to be a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel?
John O’Donohue in his book Anam Cara reminds us “Behind the façade of our normal lives eternal destiny is shaping our days and our ways” (p.90) We need to wake up and see behind the façade of the familiar where God is woven into our lives. Can I sing with the psalmist: “This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad!” (Psalm 118) My friend could marvel at being able to eat with family again although it was certainly not as she would normally have wished it to be.
““Behind the façade of our normal lives eternal destiny is shaping our days and our ways” ”
Maybe the gift of this Easter for me is to decide to begin to shape in my life the “new normal”. Try to live my life with my eyes wide open to the beauty of Springtime coming alive all around me. To accepting each day as a gift and to look for ways to be a gift for everyone I have contact with even if it is only by Zoom or a phone call. Thus, in my own small way, I hope to be ready to participate in a kinder and more loving world when we leave this time of Covid19.
-Sister Catherine Stafford, csj