A Sunday Thought For An Easter Sunday

We're continuing our Sunday thoughts in the midst of the Easter Season. As we noted last week, the Easter Season typically doesn't get as much attention as Lent. It simply doesn't get the attention it deserves. Since the Easter Season is significantly longer than Lent we should take the hint: We need to pay as close, if not closer attention.

Christ is risen! Lent, which focuses more on the Passion and Death of Our Lord, has no meaning without the Resurrection. If we made something of our Lenten discipline, it behooves us to make even more of what we might call our Easter Discipline. 

With that in mind, here's our second special spiritual gem for these Easter Sundays. As with the first we posted last week, we hope they'll help us to give this glorious Easter Season our full attention and devotion.

We continue with Father Bernard Wuellner, S.J.

“Besides her suggestions on prayer and combating worldly desires, the Church also tells us to think. ‘Set your minds on things above,’ she repeats from St. Paul when he was advising Christians risen from sin. Turn the mind to the divine and the good; let these heavenly blessings seize your imaginations, thoughts, and affections. Cardinal Newman echoed St. Paul in this bit of advice: ‘Let me put my mind on things above, and in God’s good time He will set my heart on things above.’ Desire follows knowledge. One of the ways to holiness is to long for it. One of the paths to heaven is to desire heaven. If I but occupy my mind with God, it will not be long before He will shower on me an interest in and love for these heavenly goods. Love will soar heavenward where our thoughts have already risen. The Church further suggests that we cultivate holy desires by giving some of our time to spiritual reading. From it we can gain higher esteem for spiritual realities, a sense of true values, a closer mental affinity with the judgment of Christ, and a centering of our thoughts and sentiments on the treasures of the soul. … When the wings of the spirit spring upward, we will take the right means to make heavenly goods come true in our lives. Our conduct will become more heavenly in quality. Desire will become hope, and hope will carry us forward to our meeting with Jesus in heaven. … Each Sunday, we are taught, is a little Easter, a weekly memorial of our Savior’s resurrection. Let me, then, at least on Sunday, put earth aside and climb closer to God by the ladder of heavenly desires.”

The key point here: "Desire follows knowledge." Our heart will follow our brain - eventually. But we've got to take the initiative, something any of us can do no matter the current state of our spiritual life. Even a "beginner" can simply decide to pursue holiness. That decision begins with the mind, the intellect. We know it's good. We want to do what's good. And so we set our mind on pursuing this good.

Father outlines exactly how to begin and how to pursue our goal. Re-read his suggestions. They're solid Catholic advice from a seasoned spiritual writer. There's nothing mystical or complicated there. It's not even hard to get going and keep at it. Take the first step, then the next - one foot after the other.

The Easter Season is literally packed full to the brim with graces God wants to give to us. We witnessed how much He loves us as we meditated on Jesus' Passion and Death and Resurrection. He simply overflows with Love for us.

Every Sunday is a "little" Easter. As you might imagine, the Sundays in the Easter Season are a little Easter and then some. We really ought take the time to turn our minds to the divine and the good on these Sundays of Easter. Our initiative of posting special spiritual gems is intended to get the ball rolling. If we persist, Sunday after Sunday, we form a habit that will eventually takes its place in our normal, everyday thoughts and actions. 

Happy Easter!