When getting ready for any trip or journey, most of us make a checklist of items to bring. Toiletries: check! Enough changes of clothing: check! Electronic device chargers: check!
Can you imagine going on a journey and being told not to bring anything — to just pick up and leave? Many of us might feel lost and completely discombobulated; ill-equipped (and unequipped) to accept such a daunting challenge.
Every year, the Church calls us to focus the 40 days of Lent on what we need to change about our spiritual lives. During this beautiful Lenten season we have the opportunity to take this 40-day pilgrimage into the desert, as Jesus did, unencumbered by anything that might weigh us down or distract us, from responding to the graces God wants to give us. The graces that will help draw us closer to himself and to one another. And all we need to take with us are the tried and true spiritual practices of prayer, fasting and almsgiving; or what I like to call the “three p’s”: prayer, penance and practices of charity. When we do these, we unite ourselves with Jesus during His 40 days in the desert when he did battle against the temptations the Devil used to try to distract him from his ultimate mission of bringing salvation to the world. And so, we, too, try to unite ourselves with Jesus’ battle against temptation and evil, to align ourselves to Christ’s suffering and death and to experience conversion of mind and heart when we reach our destination of celebrating the Victory of Easter.
“We are an Easter People and ‘Alleluia’ is our Song!” Our own Diocesan Patron Saint, the great 4th century bishop, St. Augustine, is given the credit for first using this statement to describe what we Christian people are. While he may never have said it exactly that way, he preached about Easter very often and about why “Alleluia” is the song of the believer. It’s the song that we will sing for all Eternity when we get to Heaven, along with “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God of Hosts!”
These 40 days of Lent are more than an occasion to shed a few unwanted pounds through our acts of fasting and self-denial. More than that, we are to shed those sinful practices or tendencies we find in ourselves and leave them buried in the desert. We are to repent and believe, to turn away from sin and follow Jesus. Lucky for us, Jesus has already done all the heavy lifting. He has defeated the Devil. He has conquered the grave. He has destroyed the power of sin and death from the inside out. He has risen from the dead — Alleluia! And because of what Jesus has already done, we are empowered to sing that same song — “Alleluia!”— and to live that song daily in our lives.
Because even when our 40-day Lenten Journey comes to an end, our life-long journey of faith continues. But because of the “new life” we find during this season of grace, we hope and pray that we will be recommitted to the “Easter mission.” Filled with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, we are called to live our lives with hope and with joy. To be up for that challenge means we need the graces of the sacraments, especially the sacrament of penance frequently and the Holy Eucharist regularly. We need a life of prayer. We need to continue using the spiritual practices of prayer, penance, and practices of charity.
By living our lives with the joy of Easter, by allowing the light of Christ to shine in our hearts and through the actions of our lives, we will help to dispel the darkness all around us: the dark-ness of suffering, of hatred, of violence, of division and of selfishness. That’s why Easter makes all the difference, and that’s why for us who follow Jesus, “we are an Easter People, and ‘Alleluia’ is our song.”
So the only checklist we need to continue that journey of faith is to be His joyful witnesses in our world. In what we say: check! In how we act: check! And in the choices we make to love one another: check! Let us always remember that when we live in the Light of Christ, inspired by the Holy Spirit, we are indeed “an Easter People.” Let us proclaim our song of victory: “Alleluia! He is Risen!”