Friday Reflection: The Fifty Days of Easter and the Resurrection…
“….The lockdowns of COVID-19 didn’t deprive us of anything in the realm of faith. Instead, they are simply requiring us to dig deeper for spirituality ourselves—which is what we have always been meant to do but have allowed the institution to do for us.”
I. If we were to see Easter and the Resurrection as a journey of 50 days instead of one day of victory and restoration, a period that begins on Easter morning (April 4) and ends on the Day of Pentecost (May 23), we could recognize that the Resurrection is only the beginning—or the resumption—of the never-ending story of God’s presence among us. The 50 days are perhaps the most important 50 days in the church year, a time that requires listening, and learning. As Joan Chittister suggests above, this year’s 50-day period is unique, one during which we can “dig deeper” because of the continuing lockdowns of COVID-19. And this digging deeper can lead to the new beginning that comes with the Resurrection. A pandemic that has meant terrible losses for so many thousands and thousands of peoples can be, for us, an opportunity to “dig deeper.”
II. Chittister wants us to recognize that the way the church year is organized does not always move us to “dig deeper for spirituality.” Could it be that the spiritually we are seeking is sometimes not part of the church’s rubrics; that the religion that the church represents is not going to deepen our spirituality? So Chittister suggests that “digging deeper” is something we must do for ourselves, and that the lockdowns have required us, perhaps unknowingly, to practice different forms of solitude. Even with our Covid-19-driven restlessness, uncertainty, and discouragement, the lockdowns can continue to teach us about our faith; indeed, the lockdowns will have prepared us for the journey of the 50 days, again perhaps unknowingly.
III. We can dig into the days between Easter and Pentecost, as the story gathers strength. There is new movement, new and different players, new hope, new Light and important new words that convey what Reynolds Price has called “a whole new life.” This “whole new life” is revealed in the Gospel of John (20:19-31), when Jesus appears to the disciples and “breathes” on them saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retained the sins of any, they are retained.” The Holy Spirit has been given to the disciples and to the Twelve and in the next days and weeks, before the Day of Pentecost,“ they went out and proclaimed the good news everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that accompanied it.” (Mark: 16: 20) In other words, they lived and worked with the Holy Spirit as they built what we can call the “Church of the Resurrection.” This episode is a central event in “50 Days” narrative.
IV. The preacher and academic, Will Willimon, tells the story of hearing Reynolds Price read his translation of the Gospel of Mark during the Wednesday of Holy Week, from beginning to end. As people were leaving the reading, a graduate student asked Willimon if the disciples ever figured out “who Jesus was and what he was up to.” Willimon goes on to say that in the Gospel of Mark the “disciples come across as about the [most unaware] followers any teacher ever had.” What the 50 Days of Easter and the Resurrection give us is an unusual opportunity to relearn “who Jesus was and what he was up to.” Even though we have learned much more than the disciples in Mark’s Gospel, our process of relearning comes with our awareness that the Resurrection is still happening, even now—mysteriously—in our world of COVID.
Amen.
—Father Peter Kountz
**A note of explanation: Going forward Suzanne Glover Lindsay and I will be posting Friday Reflections of around 500 words instead of the usual 1600-2000 words. Essays of the shorter length are meant to be more like real “reflections ,” and, we hope, more readable and engaging.
