Refreshing Ourselves on This Sunday in the Easter Season

If Easter Season has been a bit hit or miss so far, it's time to refresh ourselves.

It's similar in many ways to how Lent typically goes: a solid plan, with good intentions to follow it carefully, exactly. But much of the time it's hit or miss. When we realize things aren't going "just so," it's good to refresh ourselves.

Then again, isn't that the way many of our days go: hit or miss? This applies both to our spiritual life and to our domestic life, whatever our state of life.

We're not perfect. We're called to be perfect; we try to be perfect, as Our Heavenly Father is Perfect. But we're simply not always perfect.

We strive and fall short. Sometimes we slip and fall. It's all part of our daily struggle in this Vale of Tears.

During the Easter Season, maybe we have the intention to keep ourselves especially recollected. We want to wake up each day and live each day basking in the special graces God sends to us during this glorious season. But often, each day passes like any other. What happened to the glory of Easter?

So now it's time to refresh ourselves. Time to again be recollected in a special way. 

And as we do this, maybe it's good to recall that there's always going to be sand thrown into our spiritual gears by the world, the flesh, and the devil - no matter the season.

We recently posted something about the "little things" that can get under our skin, take up our attention, distract us from our desire to observe Easter in a special way. We gave examples from our work day with this comment:

But even as little things may add up and make us rant a bit, it's best to remember: relentless chains of tedious detail really serve God's greater glory. But we need to think of these as fertile soil into which we plant our spiritual seeds each day. How do we do that? We embrace each little thing and handle it with loving care. We consider our attention to detail, our completion of the task in a timely manner, (especially when a particular task might be especially boring or even distasteful for whatever reason) as an act of love for God. We do it out of love - FOR GOD.

If our Easter Season has been hit or miss so far, it's likely that little things play a part in our struggle. But all is not lost - not even close. The hit or miss that may have characterized our Lenten discipline, that may be throwing off our desire to keep a special presence of the glory of Easter during this holy Season, and that will likely persist once the Easter Season ends need not worry or even concern us. Our fallen human nature always has some say in how things go in this world.

But we Catholics know all about human nature, about our faults, our sins. We don't like them. But we don't let them throw us off track in our struggle to be saints. Indeed, the saints knew all this, were subjected to it, and never let it throw them off track to become saints. In fact, that's just how they did become saints.

Let's think about this on this Sunday in the Easter Season, one that may remind us of our own flagging or even failed efforts to keep Easter front and center in our daily lives. And with that realization, let's follow the lead of the saints and start off again on our particular path to holiness.

Happy Sunday and...

Happy Easter!