It’s Eastertide! Happy Easter!

One of the great joys of my life as a convert is to wish people “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Easter” long after they’ve packed away the décor of the day. I don’t do it obnoxiously, but, for example, all my emails to other Catholics are getting a mention of Eastertide right now and if I run into you at my teens’ Catholic school I’m probably going to wish you the blessings of the season. I love being Catholic for many reasons, but one I’ve grown to appreciate more and more in the 19 years since my conversion: feasting seasons.

I didn’t get it when I first converted. I lived more in the secular calendar than the Church’s. The habits I learned in childhood of when to put up and take down decorations, of when to celebrate and when to go back to normal, took a long time to unpractice.

At some point, the balance changed. I practiced Lent and covered images of Christ in purple cloth during Holy Week, attended Triduum services and arrived at Easter Sunday more certain of my own true need for a Savior.

Especially the years when Chris sang in the choir at the Triduum services, I led the sacristans, and my three young children fell asleep around me and on me during late night Masses, I arrived at Easter morning exhausted, sitting on the ground outside the tomb in order to make the world hold steady.

Lent asks us to give up our attachments. Triduum rips them away.

We’re getting up early, staying up late, preparing clothes and Easter baskets, hard boiling eggs and praying at the foot of the Cross. The years I learned to practice Lent deeply, when I led the sacristan ministry at our parish in California, I smelled Triduum’s beginning and end. Our kitchen hummed with the scent of Chrism Oil right before Triduum started, as I cleaned the almost completely emptied Holy Oil vessels to make way for new oils. And on Holy Saturday, the smell of sliced lemons and fresh-cut tree branches bound in twine mingled on the countertop, the lemons used to wash hands covered in Chrism Oil and the branches as a natural alternative to the aspergillum in the sprinkling rite.

Triduum works towards our discomfort and overwhelms our daily life. And then it’s over. It’s Easter. That Easter morning dawns with us blinking at the Light and scrambling to behave properly in a new season. And hopefully the penitence and the recognition of the grace of Christ’s Passion make us a little freer to do that.

Easter is the season of freedom, where we discover healing and joy and forever. In Easter, Jesus helps us to find the tender shoot of faith planted in adversity which is taking root in our heart and to nourish it.

At least one person in my family spent time every day of the ten days leading up to Easter Vigil participating in the life of the Church. Our slightly longer Holy Week included Stations of the Cross, diaconate formation, Chrism Mass, rehearsals for liturgies, and Adoration. Then there was the rush of Triduum with all my children home from school during the long days and the nights spent in a darkened church honoring the unending sacrifice Christ makes on our behalf. I noticed that, for me, it wasn’t a struggle this year. After years of practice, I think I’ve got the rhythm of Holy Week. It feels familiar to stop our daily lives for this one truly Holy week.

So, I’ve got a practice of Lent to go along with a solid practice of Christmas. In my opinion, Christmas is by far the easiest season to celebrate. The tree stays up and lit, the carols and the movies play, and the treats are plentiful. The kids don’t have school for a while, too, so the season, at least the first twelve days or so, is ours to enjoy.

Easter week though, where every day in the liturgy is the Solemnity of Easter, where every day is Still! Easter! Day!, I’m trying to find a way to live out this feast. Maybe with the death of Pope Francis at the beginning of the week, may he rest in peace, I especially feel wrong-footed in what it means to celebrate this season. Perhaps it’s also because, while it feels completely natural to rejoice in a baby (even one who is the Incarnate Word), it’s much harder to continue the party for a man who-rises-from-the-dead-and-comes-back-to-us-still-bearing-wounds, even if He has defeated death.

Those wounds trip me up. They don’t fit a celebratory narrative. It’s one thing to shout “He is Risen” and add an exclamation point. Shouting “He is Risen and we can still see the wounds in His hands and side” sounds deranged. The full Easter story doesn’t lend itself so simply to ringing bells and cries of joy.

But the strange truth of Eastertide is that Jesus appeared in a glorious body and some of the disciples only recognized that body as that of their rabbi and friend when they saw pain still written on it. I’ve gotten the rhythm of the 40 days of Lent spent in contemplation of suffering, sin, and death, but I think I need to work on the contemplation of the healed, glorified wounds of Christ for the 50 days of Easter.

The rhythm of that mercy mystifies me.

Jesus allows us to identify Him by His wounds and draws us to Him through the vulnerable truth of His pain. This is the mercy of Easter. Every Sunday in Easter, the Mass includes the Sprinkling Rite, the water the poured from Jesus’ side on the Cross washes over us to set us free even though we don’t deserve it and can’t earn it. In Eastertide we remember, maybe for the first time, that the Cross lives on in the flesh of our Risen Lord right now and Jesus pours out salvation through His healed wounds.

Jesus shows us that the healing of wounds won’t close them over. There are no scabs, no smooth and unscarred flesh. Rather, healed wounds allow themselves to become touchable. They are wounds without fear. Love pours in and love pours out, and wounds become thin places where Christ and the world commune.

The continuous mercy of Jesus flows out of His sinless Heart, especially at Easter. And every Sunday, when the priest flicks the blessed water of Jesus’ suffering and resurrection over me and my family, I want to live out that mercy. Then, maybe, I’ll have practiced Eastertide well.

Readings for the Sunday of Divine Mercy (Year C) on the USCCB Website