Making Time to Easter

In Lent, as with all the liturgical seasons, we mark time. It is a time of conversion. It is a time of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. That’s what we do as we move with preparations for the great feast of Easter. We keep this time by moving from a shared past through a present moment and into a hopeful future.

This temporal line moves forward from past, to present, to a future. During the season, we know where we have been as a community of faith, where we are, and where we long to be. While marking time one might think of standing in place and keeping time, but in our liturgical remembrance we move as community of faith.

We recall the saving events of our life in Christ. We remember in liturgical action and word the life-giving death of the Lord. The remembrance is not in the past alone, but is experienced in the present moment of prayer. By grace we are moved forward as our future is shaped by how Christ’s mystery embraces us and we are embraced in the mystery of death-to-life.

That is the temporal line which helps us observe and share in Christ’s life with us. When one turns the temporal line from horizontal to vertical, it is possible to discover another “marking” of Lent. As we cross through time, the believer moves through space.

The Cross Raised Up
The cross is a traditional spatial image of our Lenten journey. We read in last week’s gospel about the need for the Son of Man to be “raised up.” That was John’s Gospel. Also in John we read about how, if raised-up, the Son of Man will draw all things to himself. This being raised up can be viewed as a play on words connoting either his suffering and dying on the Cross or his being raised up by the Father in resurrection. In either case that is the whole mystery of Easter, which we begin to see in the Lenten season.

The Cross marks a spatial dimension in our Lenten journey of conversion. To understand the Easter mystery of Christ’s death-to-life, the believer begins and ends with the Cross. It is the place from which our conversion leaves and it the place where we celebrate our life in Christ.

The Cross is where the heavens and the underworld are joined. In our description of the saving mysteries, we speak of Christ “descending into hell”, the abode of the dead and the land of

darkness. But we quickly add in our Easter proclamation that he “rose” from the dead and “is seated at the right hand of the Father." This is our profession of the Creed.

It is in the dynamic symbol of the Cross that we experience in the “here and now” the love of the Father poured out for us in Christ. The “here-and-now” of the present moment is captured in the Cross.

Our windows at Christ the Redeemer provide a convenient visual and artful representation of the mystery. Under the windows we see the suffering, the dying, and the death of the Lord by which we are saved. The Crucifix gathers our own human travail into the Christ. Above the sanctuary is the victorious Cross which presents, at the same time, Christ glorified and victorious in Resurrection. In both the Crucifix of suffering and the Cross of victory we, the Church, are born of the blood and water from the side of Christ. We find life in the present moment.

Holy Week
As Church we mark time in Holy Week. We are invited from the past to a new future. We are gathered in the “here-and-now” as God’s People in Christ. We journey through the Easter mysteries. Holy Thursday: we are gathered as the disciples with their Lord looking into his death and rising. It is there we first wash feet in loving service – an invitation to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. At the same time, we are invited to share in the broken bread and in the cup poured out that anticipates Christ brokenness and outpouring in his death.

Good Friday: the Gospel of John will describe the story of Jesus’ victorious journey from death to life. The Cross will be held up, not only as an instrument of the Lord’s death, but as a symbol of his victory looking to Resurrection.

Holy Saturday brings us to the Great Vigil with its symbols of darkness and light, of death to life in the waters of Baptism, of Spirit-filled life in Confirmation. Not least of all, we gather at the Eucharist, this time at the victory table of those who have walked with Christ from death to life. As we break bread and pour out the cup, we remember that Christ died once-for-all, never to die again. In marking the time of Lent to Easter, we journey to the realization that we, too, have died with Christ forever to share in the victory of his Resurrection.

CDH