Another Spiritual Gem For Another Sunday in Our Easter Season

We're continuing our Sunday thoughts in the midst of the Easter Season. As we've noted, 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 next 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.

Today we turn to Fr. Bertrand Weaver, C.P. As we noted last week, his remarks are especially pertinent to our series. He was known as the author of His Cross in Your Life. From the introduction by Ralph Martin:

"The cross has the answers you're seeking. And Fr. Bertrand Weaver's powerful book, His Cross in Your Life, will help you find them. In just 112 pages of always practical--never theoretical--advice, Fr. Weaver reveals how the cross can bring you peace, joy, and happiness. And he shows how you can unite any suffering in your own life--large or small--with the sufferings of Christ."

Father's spiritual work focuses on the Cross and how we may unite our own sufferings to Our Lord's. But here he teaches us that we must see all this in the light of the Resurrection - a perfect spiritual gem for this Sunday in the Easter Season:

“All this is paramount for our growth in the virtue of hope, a virtue, which along with faith and love, is necessary for salvation. The foundation of our hope is expressed in the words of the Creed: ‘And I await the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.’ But our resurrection flows from that of our Lord, as St. Paul indicates when he says: ‘But as it is, Christ has risen from the dead, the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.’ He elaborates on this in writing to the Romans: ‘But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, then He who raised Jesus Christ from the dead will also bring to life your mortal bodies because of His Spirit who dwells in you.’ If our hope is not broad enough to encompass our rising from the dead at the second-coming of Christ, it is a stunted hope, which means it is not hope at all. ‘If with this life only in view,’ says St. Paul, ‘we have had hope in Christ, we are of all men the most to be pitied.’

“While we gratefully repeat through the year the words which the Church places on our lips on Good Friday – ‘We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee, because by Thy holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world,’ let us also remember the words of the Mass and Office of Easter – ‘This is the day which the Lord hath made: let us rejoice and be glad in it.’ This attitude toward the Passion and Resurrection of our Lord is not only necessary for the proper development of the virtue of hope, but is also necessary if we are to grow in that joy which is one of the fruits of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our souls. We do not love the cross for its own sake. We embrace it because of the joy that follows our ready acceptance of it. In this we are only imitating our Divine Master, ‘Who for the joy set before Him, endured the Cross.’ The Psalmist was inspired to sing: ‘They who sow in tears, shall reap in joy.’ No matter how the thought is expressed, in these words of the Psalmist, or as we express it, ‘through the Cross, to the Crown,’ let us bear in mind that Easter could not have been much closer to Good Friday, and that, if we share the Cross with Him, we will reign with Him in eternal peace and glory.” 

Father's words hit home whether this Sunday finds us in a happy or sad mood, an uplifted or exhausted state of body or mind. Since things are pretty much never just right in this world, taking time on Sunday to meditate on Father's words, to deepen our understanding of the connection expressed by 'through the Cross, to the Crown' can provide the peace and stability that our soul needs to grow closer to God. With that peace and stability, the world can spin on its wobbly axis all it wants. We remain settled and fixed on the real purpose of our lives and the reward Our Lord gives us if we are true to our purpose.

Stay the course. Our Easter discipline, kept as well as our Lenten discipline, perfectly rounds out our spiritual lives.

Happy Easter!