Becoming Easter

It has been a joyous Easter season so far on many levels. I have felt confirmed and renewed by the liturgies, the spring weather has been pleasing, I am happy to be home after long travels abroad, and a very dear friend is entering the Church next Sunday and I have the honor of being his sponsor. Many great blessings are converging for me at the moment.

Lent did its work on me too, simultaneously convicting me of my own sinfulness and leaving me acutely aware of the general brokenness of the world while also longing for a metanoia, a renewing and rebirth in Christ. A couple of simple, small things happened in last night that vividly brought to my awareness this collective brokenness and need for redemption.

As I was leaving a restaurant with some friends and casually crossing the street to my car, some stranger in a passing vehicle yelled at us hatefully for crossing too slowly. Then, as I drove home, a passenger in the car ahead of me casually tossed a beer can out the window, littering the beautiful country roadside.

These things combine to leave me with a slightly sick feeling, struck by how selfish and unfeeling people can be. And these are tiny, insignificant slights compared to the real injustices and cruelties that are unleashed in the world every day. Above all, I am left with a powerful sense of my own self-centeredness. The judgment I feel toward others is quickly turned inward as I contemplate the thousands of little ways I also show disrespect and a lack of caring. The violence, intolerance, and apathy of the world is reflected in my own tendency toward all these things.

The world is broken, and I am convicted by this brokenness with a great desire to do something in response. Of course, the only place I can effect any kind of healing is within my own heart, and even then only by divine grace.

So this week I'm meditating on the Paschal Mystery as it applies to my own heart, a heart that is broken like all the rest, and how I can let the joy and peace and compassion and understanding and tolerance and acceptance and reckless love of Easter become my gift of healing back to myself and to the world. This is no easy meditation, but I'll continue to sit with it and see what happens. It is the only response to a broken world. It is the testament of Easter.

Lord of My Life

"All the faithful should listen to the word as it is announced in the liturgy or in Bible services and respond according to their ability.  In this way, for the whole Church, Lent will not be merely a season simply of a few formalized penitential practice, half-understood and undertaken without interest, but a time of metanoia, the turning of all minds and hearts to God in preparation for the celebration of the Paschal Mystery in which some will for the first time receive the light of Christ, others will be restored to the communion of the faithful, and all will renew their baptismal consecration of their lives in God, in Christ."

--Thomas Merton, Seasons of Celebration

I feel the great stirring within me, the anticipation and expectation of Easter.  The liturgical calendar and the scripture readings and rites that accompany it have succeeded in bringing something to life within me.  Lent has revealed many dark corners within me that are in need of redemption, but not without the abiding promise of deliverance.  The light of Easter is about to break, and I have never been more aware of my need and desire to surrender completely and wholly to the Lord of my life.

I am not sure I have ever felt quite like this.  Don't get me wrong.  I am not hearing angels' voices or experiencing special charisms.  Rather, I just have this deep sense of calling and confirmation within me.  "The Lord GOD has given me a well-trained tongue," the Scripture says today, "that I might know how to speak to the weary a word that will rouse them."  

Perhaps there are many ways to speak to the weary.  I'm not sure what my way is, but I am pretty confident I will be led there if I remain open.

The "Universal" Church

I had a couple of powerful "church" experiences in Norway that are worth sharing too.  Two of my American companions were also Catholic and we decided to visit the little Catholic church in Lillehammer one Sunday morning.  It was my first experiencing attending Church outside the U.S., but it revealed to me just what we mean when we call the church "catholic," as in "universal."

Immediately when we entered I felt at home.  The smells and sounds were completely familiar to me.  We introduced ourselves to the young priest, who of course spoke perfect English and welcomed us.  I had read that the Catholic Church in Norway has traditionally had an unusual sort of reputation.  It has been the refuge for intellectuals, artists and scientists--usually converts from others traditions or from no faith background at all--and has a heavy monastic flavor.  But today's church in Norway is increasingly an immigrant church as waves of newcomers from Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa arrive daily, and many of them are Catholic.

This was evident at Mariakirken, the Catholic community in Lillehammer.  We were surrounded by a great diversity of faces, including Poles, Phillipinos, Somalis, Vietnamese, Norwegians of course, and even an American we discovered later.  The liturgy was all in Norwegian, but the structure is the same all of the world, and we found that with the little worship aid we could follow right along, singing and proclaiming the responses in our heavily-accented Norwegian voices.  It was a deeply unifying experience to gather with these people from all over the world and share in communion and a universal liturgy of praise, worship, and reflection.  It even made me appreciate how the old Latin liturgy provided a truly universal language for the church, and how those Latin fundamentalists might have a valid point or two about the importance of the old rites.  But the truth was, Latin wasn't needed for us to understand each other and be one.

The other powerful church experience took place at Domkirkeodden, the ruins of the old cathedral at Hamar.  The original cathedral dated back to the 13th century, but it was burned in the mid-1500's and all that remains are parts of the walls, stone pillars, and the reassembled altar stones, recovered from nearby fields where they probably were used as cattle and sheep fencing for some centuries.  The church is now surrounded by glass walls and ceiling at the same height as the original cathedral.  This preserves the ruins but also leaves the space open to the majestic view of Lake Mjøsa surrounding the peninsula on which the ruins rest, the nearby mountains, and the vast blue sky above.

Here we received a guided tour from the site's director, a fantastic story teller (and trained Luther priest) named Steinar.  He brought us inside the cathedral of glass and stone and, lest we think this strange structure was no longer a church, he had us close our eyes and listen while he sang the "Kyrie Eleison."  My eyes filled with tears of joy and peace and at once I felt at home in this ancient place.  Then Steinar led us up around the altar, which has been restored and is used again for interdenominational services.  Here looking across the altar past the ruined walls to the lake, the mountains, and sky, Steinar pointed out how in this place the past, present, and future are united.  We were one people and one earth on that holy ground.