Today marks the 30th day of the Easter season! My attentiveness to these Easter days has taken on a different quality this year as recent “Sabbath” experiences1 continue to gently ripple through my life and prayer. The opportunity to hear Ron Rolheiser, OMI share reflections on the Paschal Mystery, highlighting the 40 days of Easter as a particularly significant, yet often overlooked, stage spoke deeply to me.
Why is it that Jesus’ community of disciples failed repeatedly to recognize Jesus’ resurrected presence among them? Why is it that I celebrate Easter Sunday with an overwhelming joy that wanes into a predictably patient waiting for the Feasts that I know will follow in 40 days? How is the paschal mystery finding flesh and blood in my daily living, and how might I live this with more intentional awareness and deeper trust?
In his book, The Holy Longing, Rolheiser develops his thoughts around the paschal cycle we are called to undergo over and over throughout our lives as
“five clear distinct moments….part of a single process, an organic one.…one process of transformation, of dying and letting go so as to receive new life and new spirit.”2
Good Friday’s death is followed by Easter Sunday’s reception of new life; the next “40 days” describe an essential time for grieving what has been lost and adjusting to a new reality; Ascension entails a letting go of the old, allowing it to ascend while receiving its blessing; and Pentecost is an invitation to accept a new spirit for the new life that is actually being lived.
Wait a minute… The 40 days of Easter are a time for grief and readjustment?? Listening deeply, and pondering the numerous life examples Rolheiser offered for consideration, I felt some of the “stuck” places in my own life find a little wiggle-room. I recognized ways in which my “clinging” to the way things once were had become a block to their ascension, preventing the reception of fresh spirit for my life here and now.
Evidently, the disciples are living through very human stages of transition, the initial surprise and joy of new life spiraling into denial, anxiety, fear, guilt, confusion before gradual acceptance enables them to move forward with new hope and enthusiasm. Rolheiser’s examples of the many deaths we “must” undergo in life within which we must open to new life and new spirit
“the death of our youth…. our wholeness…. our dreams…. our honeymoons…. a certain idea of God and church”3
move me to a more conscious embrace of transitions’ valleys in my own life. Unaware, 40 days can stretch into 40 years or more before I choose to let go!
And yet, even when my clinging continues, Godde abides… in a word of peace, the work of the day, the breaking of the bread. With a sigh of relief and gratitude, I breathe, “Alleluia!”
1 See also my blog articles: A Time for Remembering (31 Oct 2022) and Let Us Be Blessing (2 Jan 2023).
2 Ronald Rolheiser, “A Spirituality of the Paschal Mystery” in The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality (New York: Random House, 2019), 141-166.
3 Ibid.
Claudia Stecker is a Sister of Our Lady of the Missions (RNDM). She was missioned to the Philippines in 1997 and worked as an educator, first, in Cotabato, at Notre Dame University, and, later, in Manila, at Asian Social Institute. Her subject areas included pastoral sociology, leadership, music and education. Claudia was also employed by Kuya Center for Street Children where she took part in establishing a microfinance initiative among urban poor families. Over the years, Claudia served the congregation, too, in leadership, formation and finance management, returning to Canada in 2021. From 2023, she has been missioned to New York, USA, where she serves as a host community member in a LifeWay Network safehouse for women survivors of human trafficking.
“I felt some of the “stuck” places in my own life find a little wiggle-room. I recognized ways in which my “clinging” to the way things once were had become a block to their ascension, preventing the reception of fresh spirit for my life here and now.” I resonated with this line so much, Claudia. I have never thought of my blocks “ascending” as it were–up and out. I want to stay with this… many thanks.
“and yet, even when my clinging continues, Godde abides…” Thank you for this word of faith and trust, a word I carry with me into the day, after reading your reflection.