Easter thoughts
First off welcome home to the all of the new Catholics who have entered the Catholic Church this Easter! One of the parts of the Easter Vigil I always love is those in R.C.I.A. entering the Church and receiving Communion for the first time. I am always flooded with the emotions of my own entry into the Church and my first Communion received worthily from Fr. Santos, OATH (Oblate Apostles of the Two Hearts). On my way to Communion for the first time is when I first realized that I had literally spent 40 years in the wilderness - the concept which I included in my conversion story.
One of the shifts I am still working on making is the full realization that Easter is the greatest feast in the Church. Christmas usually gets so more more attention and is met with a greater anticipation. Part of the problem is the cultural focus on Christmas with so much emphasis that it is more difficult to fully realize that reality of Easter. Even though I intellectually realize that Easter is the highest Feast and know the reasons for this, I still do not have the same anticipation for Easter as I do for Christmas.
As great as the gift of the Incarnation is, the gift we received of the empty tomb and our subsequent redemption extends the gift of the Incarnation to our redemption. The present we received on his birthday was fully opened and revealed to us upon his death and subsequent resurrection. He left the gift wrapping of his burial shroud behind him in that tomb. He is the gift that keeps on giving. Like Chesterton I joined the Church to get rid of my sins. The first stage of wisdom is knowing you have sins to get rid of. Possibly the second stage of wisdom is knowing you continuously have sins to get rid of and I must say I am quite thankful to God for the gift of confession. The truth is that he who is wisdom himself suffered and died for us to extend the promise he made to the good thief to all of us.
I think it is no surprise that the culture can so embrace Christmas and see Easter as a footnote if anything. Though I am happy that there are no countdowns of shopping days till Easter and that while there is Easter commercialization it is certainly not to the same extent. The basic distillation of Christmas movies is that family is important, and not necessarily that the Holy Family is important. If there were Easter movies the message should be that repentance is important, or actually absolutely crucial. But the message that we have sins that need repenting of in the first place is of course quite frowned upon. If you feel bad about doing something it must be just guilt and the cure is to help you to remove the guilt. To be more accurate the truth is that the culture still believes in sin, it is just that a quite different list has been come up with and a whole bunch of sins have been crossed off. And the ones that are crossed off are suppose to be absolved on the psychiatrist's couch instead. But of course the reaction to Good Friday and Easter is nothing new.
For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. - 1st Corinthians 1:22-25
A stumbling block indeed as is evidenced by this recent story.
The pastors at this church in Raleigh,
North Carolina, were perplexed when they saw the Holy Week Sunday
school lessons for preschoolers from "First Look," the publisher of the
one to five year-old Sunday school class materials. There wasn't a
mention of the resurrection of Jesus. Naturally, the pastors inquired
about the oversight. It turns out it was no oversight...
"Easter is a special time in churches," the letter from the publisher
says. "It's a time of celebration and thankfulness. But because of the
graphic nature of the Easter story and the crucifixion specifically, we
need to be careful as we choose what we tell preschoolers about Easter."
Mark Steyn replied to this story.
So now the story ends with the Last Supper - and presumably afterwards Jesus and His friends watch Elmo and then go to bed. That the foundational event of your faith is now excessively "disturbing" is almost too parodic a reductio of the Wimp Christianity of the mainline churches.
Though Jesus' death and his dying for our sins is rather disturbing in that our sins did indeed require this. That at the Agony in the Garden Jesus felt the weight of the sins of the world past, present, and future and that our own sins are heaped upon this weight. That his death wasn't just satisfaction for "those worst of sinners", but was required because of the sins of each and everyone of us. We can't play the Pharisee here thanking God that we are not like others. God is always thinking of us or else we would just stop existing, but I certainly realize that during this agony he was thinking of me and my sins. Not exactly a thought that leads to pride. But if we can't be humbled and thankful thinking about Easter, then we can't be either humble or thankful.
Alleluia, Christ is risen indeed! May you have a blessed Eastertide.
Known as 
CJ, thanks for the great post. One thing: When you write, "As great as the gift of the Incarnation is, the gift we received of the empty tomb and our subsequent redemption is so much greater," I get nervous. I am not a Catholic theologian (I'm still a Prot), but it seems to me that they're both two sides of the same kind. If the flesh is enlivened in the Incarnation, resurrection is a natural corollary. Just a thought. I'm out of my depths here, but again, both Incarnation and Res seem to be, well, of equal importance in the economy of salvation.
Irenaeus,
I agree and reworded my post. It is always good to get picky when it comes to theology.
Your links in this story are broken so I could not read them, but here are my thoughts...
We struggled with what exactly to tell our 3-yr-old daughter about Easter, so it is right to be sensitive, but no need to leave the central events out altogether. On Good Friday, we did the stations of the cross at home as a family, and did the early ones normally, went quickly over the ones where Jesus died (since there were images in the book we did not want to focus on) then talked about the resurrection on Easter.
I began helping at our parish's new Catechesis of the Good Shepherd program when it was already in progress this fall, because the other catechist/aide had an unexpected schedule change. If you are unfamiliar with this program, it's a fantastic (IMHO) catechetical program developed in Italy over more than 50 years, and is based on the earlier work Maria Montessori did in religious education decades before that. Anyway, it is based on the idea that very young children have an innate love for God and instinctive grasp of Christianity when it is presented to them in a way appropriate to the age.
This was my first Easter teaching in the program, and I was wondering how the children in our class (ages 3 to 6) would react to the lesson about the last supper. Turns out they all knew very well that Jesus died and came back to life, before either of us said a thing. Children aren't stupid, they're young. Big difference.
Catechesis in this country suffers from the impression that children are too dumb to learn anything important. Instead, they're often just taught meaningless stuff that, when they get older, they decide is stupid.
Gail in Cincinnati
Is it all that bad for a child to be impressed with the trauma and magnitude of the Crucifixion? If they grow up with that childlike fear and sympathy always with them- so much the better.
The the rest of us "grown-up people" need to be just as awestruck, petrified, saddened, and jubilant as the little ones, and then we'll really be going somewhere...
An irreligious former co-worker of mine was sending her daughter to a Lutheran preschool, and was dismayed to find out that they had been coloring pictures of the Last Supper and the Crucifixion at Easter. In fact, she was hopping mad that they would show that to kids.
My response: "Well, you ARE sending her to a religious preschool..."
Her response: "I had no idea they'd do that to kids that young!"
My response: "Well, you ARE sending her to a religious preschool..."
My 4 year old daughter frequently comments when she sees a crucifix: "I didn't WANT Jesus to have to die, but he died for my sins, and now he's alive again!" Kids GET it. Nobody's talking about showing the Passion of the Christ to little ones; just the basic storyline, you know? As the Good Book says, without the resurrection, our faith is in vain, and you can't have the resurrection without the crucifixion.
Thanks for this post. I'm going to have to strain to keep off my pet soapbox in this comment, but I some time back came to the belief that much of what passes for morality today is actually gutlessness, and that the same motive that leads many Christians to be hyper-sensitive about certain books might also lead them to water down their faith or avoid its tough parts--and here is a fine example.
Oops. Got on my soapbox.
Post more about OATH! We know Fr. John Santos & are involved in the Alliance of the Holy Family International [AHFI]. In fact, 3 of our friends have joined the community, and we will be attending a retreat in San Antonio, TX this Divine Mercy weekend, given by Fr. Bing. Fr. John will be there as well, and I will tell him you mentioned him in your blog. This is just a simple request from one of your long-time readers - feel free to take it or leave it. HAPPY EASTER!
I remember being 4 or 5. My Mother used to take me with her to Church when she went to confession. I cannot have been older because the other children were not born yet. Everytime, I stood transfixed in front of one of those plaster, painted Pietas, nearly lifesize (if you are 4)and made her tell me the whole story - every single time, from Annunciation to Resurrection. It was a deeply satisfying experience. And clearly had longlasting value.