Dear Friends,
We hope that Easter week has been a good time for you & that you have been able to ‘feast’ a bit rather than ‘fast’! (whatever those words ‘fasting’ & ‘feasting’ mean for you – not necessarily just food & drink!)
We aim to share several Easter reflections with you over the next weeks and we start today with some. They include two pieces by Fr Flor McCarthy, ‘Seeds of Consolation’ & ‘A Quiet Joy & Peace’. Perhaps their content will surprise you so close to Easter Sunday. To explain: Lent & Easter are a bit arbitrary in that perhaps we feel we should suddenly experience great joy on Easter Sunday & for the weeks that follow – ie Eastertide. But in the reality of our lives it doesn’t necessarily work like that: a sad experience on Easter Monday, an anniversary of death at this time of a much loved one, a bad diagnosis coming in the days following Easter can send us back into Good Friday. Or maybe the burdens we felt during Lent did not lift on Easter Sunday. These two pieces may be helpful to anyone who finds themselves in that position.
The blessing today is Rutter’s Clare blessing – we hope you enjoy it.
This comes to you all with our love & prayer for a good Eastertide
Creator of Springtime
How can it be that every year
I forget the miracles visiting
the land in the form of fresh leaves,
laughing flowers, greening grass.
Winter holds a strong power over me.
I lose the memory of vibrant vigor,
the unseen energy raising
dead earthen things to awakening life.
Risen One, dwelling within me,
how can it be that I forget you,
your passionate grace tending my soul,
your constant stream of hope
rising up through the dead ground
of my brown, barrened prayer.
I turn to you in this season of spring,
bowing gratefully
to every growing plant, every flourishing flower,
for each one sings an Easter metaphor
full of memory, proclaiming your wild embrace
of my inner life, a life holding the promise
of an eternal return to spring.
Joyce Rupp
A Quiet Joy & Peace
Fr Flor McCarthy
On Easter Day we still feel pain,
our own pain & the pain of others.
But a new element has been introduced.
It doesn’t remove the pain,
but gives it meaning, & lights it up with hope.
All is different because Jesus is alive
and speaks his words of peace to us,
and a deep sense of peace.
Jesus has broken the power of death
and given us the hope of eternal life.
Lord, guard this hope with your grace,
and bring it to fulfilment in the kingdom of heaven.
Seeds of Consolation
What can I say to you, my friend,
in your hour of grief?
Just a word from my heart.
In the midst of your sorrow seeds are being sown –
seeds of consolation, hope, resignation, & even gratitude.
This winter will pass,
and spring will again visit the garden of your heart.
You will see these seeds grow, blossom, & bear fruit.
Then your sorrow will turn into joy,
a joy no-one will be able to take from you.
Fr Flor McCarthy SDB