Reflection on the collect/opening prayer for the Third Sunday of Easter
The forty days of Lent are to prepare for the fifty days of Easter. Is that your experience?
Regularly people have a very intense Lent (study groups, extra services, disciplines, etc.) And then after Easter Day, the next Sunday (last Sunday) is “Low Sunday” and soon everything is “back to normal”. Thankfully the parish church I participated with for the Second Sunday of Easter continued from the Easter Vigil with the environment looking at its best, flower arrangements magnificent, five times the Easter Greeting was used in the service (Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!), Alleluias added to the dismissal, and good strong Easter singing, again filled with Alleluias. Was your experience last Sunday like that? Will this be (able to be) maintained for the fifty days of the Easter Season? What is it that for many sombreness is easy to maintain (the preparation) but celebration is difficult to maintain (what we have been preparing for)? And also let’s be clear: celebration of the Easter Season is not identical to the frothy, surface-level, superficial jolliness that our culture (and many communities and Christians?) can mistake and replace for the deep transformation, and transformative celebration that Easter is about.
Please add hymns, prayers, ideas, resources in the comments.
And join the facebook “event”, Easter is 50 days.
