Lent is nearing its end and this week we enter the solemn mystery of Holy Week followed by the exuberant joy of the Easter resurrection. In those few days on which the Lent and Easter season pivot we go from death to life as we follow the narrative of Christ’s death and resurrection. In fact, baptisms on Easter Vigil symbolise human death as one is plunged into the waters. The person then emerges out of the waters into new Christian life. But the theme of death and resurrection doesn’t just live within Holy Week. It is carried with us throughout each day we live. Trevor Thomson’s song “We Belong to You” offers us these lyrics:
We belong to you, O Lord of our longing, we belong to you. In our daily living, dying, and rising we belong to you.
Each day the human person experiences a whole range of experiences and emotions in both expected and unexpected events and encounters. We experience little deaths like uncovering a weakness, the sadness that comes from a sharp comment, feelings of unworthiness, or just a plain bad day. But we experience “rising” as well: when someone says hello, when we attain a goal, when there’s a spring in our step, or we feel motivation we felt was lost. The song even alludes to this transformation from death to life, old to new, in the sacrament of baptism:
In the waters of your mercy, When the old becomes anew. Souls united in the mystery, We belong to you.
As we shift from Lent to Easter it’s important to pay attention to that shift with as much awareness as possible. What we witness as we go from the anticipation of Holy Thursday to the sorrow of Good Friday to the emptiness of Holy Saturday and finally to the Exsultet of Easter, happens on a smaller scale, in our day to day living, dying, and rising.
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Music by Kevin MacLeod
