Weekend Reflections for 3/19/21

Spring has come to the grounds of White House Retreat in St. Louis.  Daffodil green shoots now are topped by yellow flowers, and on many of the trees there is a subtle but colorful haze – almost like an Impressionist painting – which promises that the brown-gray “death” of a St. Louis winter must soon surrender to new color, new light, new life.

For me this year’s spring began two weeks ago when I discovered the above-pictured crocus, just emerged in an otherwise barren flower bed bordering Chiuminatto Hall.  How appropriate, it seemed, that this first flower would carry the penitential color of the Lenten Season while still teasing us with the white and gold of the great Easter Season for which we remain in preparation.

Lent is a season of preparation… it is also a season of learning.  What Jesus learned is what we too must learn, for to become fully Christ-like is to become fully human.  The author of the passage from the Letter to the Hebrews used on the Fifth Sunday of Lent reminds us that the earthly Jesus, like all human beings, grew in consciousness of what his mission was and learned through experience the full meaning of what it is to be obedient to God’s desires.  To be obedient to love – to faithfully live out the commitment to do and be what is “most loving” in all of our relationships – is to be obedient to God.  But that obedience to love inevitably entails a willingness to suffer.

Again, what Jesus learned is what we too must learn.  There is no life that does not entail suffering, and there is no life without death.  This paradox is expressed in the image of this Sunday’s Gospel… “unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces great fruit.”  The dyings of Lent – especially those which help us to die to what St. Ignatius would call the narrowness of “self” – give rise to our profound sharing in the resurrected life of Easter.  Winter gives way to spring… darkness gives way to light… death gives way to life. 

Let us celebrate the reassurances – sometimes found in purple flowers with golden white centers – which these late Lenten days offer all of us of God’s love and of his ultimate victory over sin and death.

Fr. Frank Reale, S.J.