Celebrate Easter at St. Andrew's

Dear Friends,

The pastel displays in the stores are looking pretty picked over. The various shapes and forms of rabbits have been out a long time, even if the big bunny hasn't yet had his big day. Culturally, Easter functions a little like a mini-Christmas – it has it's colors, decorations, and themes. There's even a terrifying blow-up bunny in a cul-de-sac by my kids' school that shocks us into alertness each morning as it stares creepily at us when we drive by.

But Easter is more than just the culmination of the season of build up. The Easter we celebrate in the church is not a festival of springtime, but rather an explicit contradiction of the ways the world seems to be.

The three holy days of the Triduum -- Maundy Thursday (with Jesus' betrayal and arrest), Good Friday (with Jesus crucifixion and death) and Holy Saturday (in the tomb) – are contradicted by the empty tomb and resurrected Jesus on Sunday morning.

We think of being contradicted as a bad thing, but Pope Francis has written insightfully, "contradiction...is not always something harsh and painful, for mercy and...tender love are themselves sign of contradiction."

Easter is a contradiction of the world of power and violence, suffering and death. That's a world we've had too much of lately, from the pandemic to Ukraine, and the scores of less newsworthy but more personal trials and tribulations, isn't it time again to come and hear God's great contradiction of all that stuff? That's not the bad sort of contradiction. It's the wonderful sort. God's sort of contradiction. Come and celebrate with us this weekend.

In Christ,
Fr. Andrew