Easter Renewal

Essay published in Spirituality magazine, March/April 2015.

The gloriously scented bluebell

Easter is probably my favourite liturgical time of the year. At some point many years ago, I realised that a wonderful sense of wellbeing and enthusiasm comes over me at this time of year. It is also matched by the warming springtime, longer days, daffodils and bluebells. This sense of wellbeing arrives at Easter, and follows on from a quieter Lenten time of inner transformation and prayerfulness.

I do not think I have ever seen anything more beautiful than the bluebell I have been looking at. I know the beauty of our Lord by it.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Lent has traditionally been a time of prayer, fasting and helping others (almsgiving), when we engage in a period of renewal, and try in our own way to echo the 40 days our Lord spent in the wilderness, praying, fasting, and being tempted. It culminates at Easter when we take time to meditate on His Passion, and to celebrate His Resurrection.


It is a time of cleansing and sacrifice, of doing without unnecessary luxuries and of consciously trying to give up unhealthy habits and behaviours. Some people decide to give up something specific such as smoking, alcohol, chocolate or sugar, or at least to limit their levels of consumption. Others look towards their actions and try to give up bad habits, negative attitudes, unhelpful thinking or other limiting behaviours. Still others decide to take up a positive habit for Lent – getting more exercise, eating well, helping others, showing random acts of kindness, or offering their time to volunteer at a local organisation.


What I noticed about this season is that even if we find ourselves too busy or too stressed or for any reason unable or uninterested to engage consciously with this renewal, the renewal seems to happen anyway, albeit with probably a little more resistance from ourselves. Life energy is renewing itself, and we all benefit. God, as Life, is emptying us out, clearing out the cobwebs, and preparing for a freshness in our direction, in our thinking, and in our lives. It prepares us for a new beginning. It is an internal time, a time of releasing old and unwanted habits. We are being renewed from within.


This inner renewal can be far from easy. It can be a time of intense frustration, where nothing goes according to plan, and obstacles appear around every corner. It is a time of following, rather than leading. It is a time of sensitivity, of recognising our limitations, our flaws and our compulsions. We can gain great self-awareness during this time, and become wise to our tendencies and habitual reactivity to life. We can also become weary and despairing. This weariness is a good thing, as it makes us reluctantly accept and admit our limitations. Through an inner consent and surrender, we are then more open to welcoming God’s Way into our lives and circumstances.


Fasting has been a tradition in many cultures and religions throughout the centuries, cleansing the body, clarifying the mind, and renewing our spirit. Apart from food, the act of going without can mean abstaining from overindulging in work life, sport, TV, computers, tablets, Facebook and other technology. It can also mean noticing and trying to balance or curb our emotional responses at work and with loved ones, such as losing our patience, getting angry, or falling into despair.


The difficulties we may experience during Lent humble us and make us more aware of our weaknesses and imbalances. Through perseverance and prayer, we are echoing the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness, his prayers to his Father, and his overcoming of the temptations in the desert. We can often feel that parts of us are dying off at this time of year. It is the dying off of the old stale parts of us. It stirs a desire in us for the purity and simplicity of God’s love. It awakens in us a desire for prayer and devotion. We gain patience for the weaknesses of others. We may even find it easier to help others at this time. Through sacrifice, our internal needs are simplified.


By Easter, there is a great forward thrust in life, in nature and within ourselves. The darkness of winter gives way to the light of spring. The land becomes warm, crops are sown and vegetables are planted for the seasons ahead. We notice the quality of light changing, the length of our day, and daylight saving heralds a burst of evening light and activity. We feel back to our old selves, but better, because humility stays with us, and we remain sensitive to others needs. We are more generous with our desires. We want something, but because it benefits more than just ourselves. This season surrounds us with a sense of holiness and goodwill and acceptance of self, others and our circumstances. We are blessed and renewed.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

St. Patrick

Hail, glorious Saint Patrick, dear saint of our Isle

On us thy poor children bestow a sweet smile

And now thou art high in thy mansions above

On Erin's green valleys, look down in thy love.

Today marks the feast day of Saint Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. It is a celebration which is marked throughout the world, when the Shamrock is worn, and the Green is on display.

Much of St. Patrick's life is the stuff of legend, but there are two surviving letters written by him in Latin, which give an insight into his life and his character - the Confession/Declaration (Confessio) and the Letter to Coroticus which tell of his early years, his faith, and his missionary life in Ireland as a bishop.


Early Years
He was born into a Christian family in Britain in approximately 390 AD. The family were of the Roman official class and were materially comfortable. When he was 16, he was captured and brought to Ireland as a slave, where his own faith was strongly tested. Coming from such a comfortable background, he now faced life threatening situations, isolation and hardship. It was in this context, where he worked for some time as a shepherd and faced his despair and aloneness, that his prayer life deepened and his faith matured. He came to know that God was present.

My faith grew stronger and my zeal so intense that in the course of a single day I would say as many as a hundred prayers and almost as many in the night. This I did even when I was in the woods and on the mountains. Even in times of snow or frost or rain I would rise before dawn to pray.

St. Patrick, The Confession

After 6 years, he heard a voice telling him he would soon go home, and this prompted him to make an attempt to escape from his master. He fled 200 miles to the coast and was eventually allowed to board a trading ship bound for Europe. Enduring more hardship, hunger and captivity, he finally made it home to his family in Britain. Profoundly affected by his experience, he decided to further deepen his faith and knowledge by embarking on a period of study of Christianity. It is believed he studied primarily in France, and was ordained by St. Germanus of Auxerre. His writings show his great understanding of the Bible and his familiarity with the earliest Fathers of the Church.

Responding to another vision where he heard "the voice of the Irish" calling him to them, St. Patrick returned to Ireland in approximately 432 AD to help spread the Christian faith. He undoubtedly received much resistance initially and was again held captive at times, but The Confession depicts a time of great conversion when St. Patrick baptised thousands of people, and ordained many priests. He felt this was his true vocation, and was filled with enthusiasm and energy to share his faith with the people of Ireland.


Legends
Irish folklore tells how St. Patrick used the three leaves of the Shamrock plant to explain the Holy Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit - three persons in one God. The Shamrock remains an important symbol of St. Patrick and Ireland to this day.

Legend also tells how St. Patrick banished the snakes from the island, chasing them into the sea with his staff after they assailed him during a 40-day fast he was undertaking on top of a hill. This may be more symbolic than literal, associating St. Patrick with driving out the old, pagan ways out of Ireland and heralding in a new faith. It is also believed that it was more a merging of the valuable old Irish traditional and cultural beliefs with his teaching which moved forward into this new Christian faith.

Another tale describes whenever Patrick was teaching about Christianity, he would thrust his ash walking stick into the ground. On one spot at Aspatria (ash of Patrick), it is told that it took a long time to convince the people, that his ash stick had taken root before he had firmly planted his message. 

Later Years
After nearly thirty years of Evangelism, he died on 17 March 461, and according to tradition, was buried at Downpatrick. His life as a missionary was very successful. He endured constant danger, threats and further times of captivity, but saw "the flock of the Lord in Ireland growing splendidly with the greatest care" (The Confession). He had a deep knowing that God was working through him, guiding and protecting him, and this made him trust completely in his mission without worry for his safety. He had a love and belief in his vocation, and he offers an example to us of a grace-filled life. Patrick has endured as the principal champion of Irish Christianity and is held in great esteem in the Irish Church, and in the hearts of the Irish people. Relics of St. Patrick, including his Bell, are held at the National Museum of Ireland.

As a cultural day, St. Patricks Day is celebrated by the Irish and any other enthusiastic nationality wishing to don the Green for the day. Parades are being held in the major cities across the world, wherever the Irish have replanted themselves over many past generations. From the days of the famine in the 1840s, millions of Irish either chose or were forced to survive elsewhere in the world, bringing their Irishness with them, and hopefully managing to embody it as they welcomed the new cultures of their chosen destinations. On this day, we send our love to our friends and family overseas, we wear our Shamrock, we cheer at our parades, and we count our blessings for each other.

Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig oraibh!

Image of St. Patrick, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Going Beyond The Shadows

Beyond The Shadows

There are times when we fight with shadows that don’t even exist. Then, there are times when we shock ourselves by the darker sides of our nature. We see that we contain openness and closed-mindedness and closed-heartedness. We contain dark and light, love and hate, peace and rage, acceptance and rebellion, hope and despair, success and defeat, approval and rejection. It seems the deeper we go into one polarity, the wider we can also swing in its equivalent polarity. We prefer the "nicer" places, and try and avoid the "darker" places.

We all have unloving qualities. We can rage against the flow of our lives. We can criticise others' weaknesses and interpret how they further complicate and frustrate our lives. We can blame Life and God for our difficulties and in spite of that, find no relief. We can move through our days and not once get beyond ourselves, our needs and demands. In spite of being dedicated to self-awareness, we lose control of our objectivity, we lose our patience, we get angry, we feel self-righteous or ashamed. Can we get over ourselves!

As we lapse in our Contemplative practices, our meditation, our awareness of Silence, our gaze and consent to Spirit, we land into the shadows, into upheaval, disharmony and chaos. It is inevitable. Restlessness is the natural way of our mind and emotions. We won't change this reality. Contemplation gently reminds us again to take the focus off ourselves and the events of our ever-changing lives, to widen our gaze, and plant it on Presence, on Stillness, on Silence, on Spirit, on whatever or however God is manifesting in our lives.

The shadows remind us we have become compromised. They help tire us again of our restlessness and self-centredness, and return our hunger for balance and harmony. They remind us not to settle for anything less than awareness and trust in the higher order playing out in our lives.

We are multi-flawed human beings, with plenty of shadows. Humility and surrender allow us to admit them, to admit our forgetfulness and our lapses, and to seek forgiveness from ourselves and our loved ones who witness our flaws up close. Circumstances not going our way mostly reveal that our way is insufficient and incomplete, and perhaps not loving to everyone concerned, and would therefore not serve us well, either. We are softened and emptied out even more, ever more.


The way of Love and Harmony will always win out, and we end up being thankful this is the case. It's never about us. It's always about how Love is unravelling itself in us.

When our attention is on ourselves, in the image-blindness of the ego, everything is a distraction from God. When attention is in God, with the vision of faith, everything reveals God to us.

Laurence Freeman OSB, The Selfless Self