Maintaining Easter for 50 days can be a challenge for us. How’s your Easter looking this year? Are you still eating your meals “with exultation and sincerity of heart, praising God and enjoying favor with all the people”? Or are you feeling a little wilted?
How do you try to maintain Easter?
Lilies seem to be dying at a greater pace this year. A few other churches report this too. Must be climate change. A later Easter means a more concentrated “graduation” season: First Communion, Confirmation, and university commencement. Wilted? For me it’s more like a deep fatigue.
We use many other Spring flowers besides lilies, so the hydrangeas, azaleas and peace lilies are still going strong….and we have a few die hard Easter lilies (helped along by our sacristan who surreptitiously replaces live lilies with silk ones when the plant no longer has any live blooms). We are still singing our alleluias, our Easter hymns and doing a sprinkling rite.
The “exultation” is hard to maintain, but I am doing my part in savoring the Easter season by reading and pondering Sandra Schneiders’ “Jesus Risen in Our Midst: Essays on the Resurrection of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel”. I think the Easter celebration can be more than an extroverted display of flowers and song and sprinkling, as beautiful as these elements are. Taking time to meditate on the gift of the Resurrected Christ has been giving meaning to my life during these 50 days.
How many parishes use the Rite of Sprinkling throughout the Easter Season? At this parish, it’s a battle to get the priests to do it. “It’s optional.” So what, I say. It’s Easter.
Otherwise, the music keeps the exuberance up. Alleluias abound. The decor is festive and dying lilies and other blooms are exchanged for fresh ones. It seems to carry well here.
Before Mass begins, I greet the people with the acclamation: Christ is Risen! All respond with great vigor: He is truly risen! The church is as beautifully decorated this Sunday as it was on Easter Day. We don’t do the sprinkling rite because everyone blesses themselves with water from the baptismal font on the way into church. No one asks for it. Easter goes well in Moore.
I attended a Mass yesterday where, except for the orations and the color of the vestments, you’d never know it was Easter. The celebrant didn’t even use one of the prefaces for Easter (I believe he used the fixed preface for EPII). None of the music made reference to resurrection or looked forward to Pentecost (though there was a praise song that had “alleluia” in the refrain). I suspect some in the assembly were wondering why the priest was wearing white prior to Memorial Day.
It’s challenge enough keeping up my own energy and enthusiasm in this season of first communion, confirmation, graduation, last Mass of the school year, Ascension, Pentecost, Holy Trinity, Corpus Christi, etc. It’s a marathon.
But the greater challenge is trying to keep my musicians and liturgical ministers engaged for a few more weeks. I have 38 members of my children’s choir–only 6 showed up to sing on May 4. I have 42 members of my angel choir–only 12 showed up yesterday. My adult choir had 24 members on Easter, only 8 came to confirmation last week.
Attendance runs strong in the fall and winter, then quickly drops off after Easter. When people get busy with all of the May activities and summer vacations, church is the first thing to go.
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