Thinking back all those years to those days of that Stubborn Christmas Tree, still standing, or at least what was left of it by then, by the time Lent arrived, all got my mind working some extra hours and, as a result, I have something to share with you, something that emerged from the saga of the Christmas Tree but also from the events currently engulfing us.
It's a bit of a digression from the original Christmas Tree story but, I believe, important for us today.
As I looked back at my last writing, I see that the explanation was offered that we were using that Christmas Tree as a sort of visual lesson.
Joyously it welcomed the Christmas Feast. And joyously, radiantly we also welcomed the Feast and the One who is at the very heart of the Feast.
However, as time passed, the old tree grew older and dryer, visibly so.
It began to make us uncomfortable - just the way it was.
And that was the visual lesson for us.
That tree was visually reminding us that as time passes, we can tend to take for granted what God has done and still is doing for us.
Our faith can become lukewarm; our ceremonies and rituals can become routine and dry.
We can lose our beauty as a People of Faith.
We can become dry and boring!
That was the lesson of the Tree as Lent approached.
And now, today . . .
We are in a Lent unlike any we have ever experienced.
We are coming to a Holy Week, days away now, like none we had ever imagined.
And Easter this year . . .
Things we had come to take for granted . . .
Rituals and customs we had grown up with . . .
Things that had always been that way . . .
Not this year!
The unity around that Table of the Lord, that warm gathering for the Lord's Supper . . . in isolation this year. There will be no gathering of the community. There will only be those of us who connect via our computer screens to watch at a distance one from another.
There will be no washing of feet, no prophetic signs of our call to service, no union and no Communion.
And we will be left to hunger.
And on that Friday - again a day before those isolating screens.
The cross we may venerate will be the one in our own homes.
We will feel the emptiness of that first Good Friday in ways never in our lifetimes as yet imagined.
No crowds will gather around new fires on that Vigil night.
No blankets of glowing candles will fill the darkness of our church buildings.
We will hear no proclamations of our Sacred History, no breaking of the silence with vigorous Alleluias.
We will not wince or even duck away from water washing us anew.
And our Communion with the Risen Lord will be relegated to a Spiritual Communion.
We will hunger.
Even on Easter.
And maybe it is good for us to hunger.
Maybe we have been taking too lightly the rich blessings that we have.
Maybe we have been trivializing our treasures.
Those increasingly empty spaces at our Masses, those intensifying declarations of being "spiritual but not religious," those inclinations to assume we can do without and get away with . . . suddenly there is a void, a painful void as we come to these, the most solemn and sacred of our days.
Will we who live through these days ever take for granted again?
Should we?
Dare we?
Are we absorbing the lesson of The Hunger?
Back to the Christmas Tree that Wouldn't next blog . . .
Meantime - Stay Safe! Stay Home!
And Pray!
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