Rejoice and sing now, all the round earth,
Bright with a glorious splendor,
For darkness has been vanquished by our eternal King.
I began last April’s column with a quote from T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland.” This year I am inspired again by Eliot, who writes in his poem “Little Gidding”:
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.
Here we are at the beginning of April and the beginning of Spring, a time when we like to celebrate new life, the warmth of longer days and the beauty of new flowers that seem to be blooming everywhere, and yet, I can’t help but feel that this April may feel more like an end for some than a beginning. Some endings are welcome. I, for one, am ready for Lent to be over and I could do without the cold weather for a while, but some endings are much harder to bear. Whether it is the end of a career, a relationship, or a life, it can be incredibly difficult at times to remain optimistic and hopeful when something that has given our life great meaning is now coming to an end.
For most Christians, the first three days of April this year coincide with what is called the Sacred Triduum, or the three holy days: Maundy (or Holy) Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. For Christians these days are focused on the contemplation of the end: specifically the end of the life of Jesus of Nazareth: his last supper (Thursday), his execution (Friday), and the liminal time of mourning and waiting for what was coming next (Saturday). For the followers of Jesus, those three days represented not only the death of someone that they truly loved, but also the death of their hopes and dreams for what he would do in their own life. Looking back on the event 2000 years later, we can see that what was at first seen as the end of one life, was also the beginning of something far more powerful and greater.
The end is where we start from. The future can be such an unknown and scary thing sometimes; the past which may not have always been happy, is at least familiar to us. But life never allows us to remain forever the same: our careers change, our relationships change and our bodies change. The challenge of faith is to see in all these changes not just an end, but also a new beginning. Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote that: “All that I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all that I have not seen.” The Easter Vigil, which is a service that many Christians participate in on Saturday night, consists of many readings which retell stories of miracles and grace from the Judeo-Christian scriptures. It is easier to have faith in the future, if we can remind ourselves of how we have experienced God’s grace in the past.
In your own life, what sorrowful endings turned out to be blessed beginnings? When has an unwanted or unfortunate change brought about something truly wonderful? I can recall many times in my life when God has placed me where I needed to be, not exactly where I wanted to be. Each time the change may have been difficult, and even painful, but ultimately I can look back and see in every ending the beginning of something new.
The Easter Vigil service begins in total darkness, which is appropriate since after a dramatic change or loss in our lives we may feel lost or in the dark, just as those first followers of Jesus did, but it doesn’t end that way; it ends in total and glorious light, symbolic of the hope that our lives do not end in darkness, but rather, in the light of something new and wonderful. May you be blessed by the ability to see in every ending, the seeds of a new beginning.
Rejoice and be glad now, Mother Church,
And let your holy courts, in radiant light,
Resound with the praises of your people.
Blessings,
Fr. Kevin
