Alleluia! Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

This Lent, and especially this Holy Week and Easter, have served as the most reflective period of my life in over two years, likely since the last time I went backpacking in Alaska. In this reflective process, I have thought a lot about the spiritual journey of my life. I feel like I can describe it in the following way...

As a child, the church of my parents (the Southern Baptist Church) introduced me to Jesus. We carried on an on and off friendship, the off periods due to indifference and the on periods due to crisis. Many people talk of "fair weather friends" and "fair weather Christians" but I was a foul weather one instead. I have found it easier to be a faithful devotee when things are rough than when things are good. Through this on and again off again friendship with Jesus, I figured that being a thinking person I ought to learn a bit more about Theology, and that is what would lead me to greater belief, greater understanding, and greater obedience. It was at this point that a dear friend of mine (one who I have sadly become estranged from, and with whom I long for reconciliation) introduced me to Calvinism and Christian Reconstruction.

Though I hold on to few of the theological positions I acquired at that time, I intensely value that period of my spiritual journey because it was the first time that I was challenged to challenge much of my closely held dogma, to question if my presuppositions were correct, and then to attempt to vigorously defend my new positions against the inertia of my stagnant and theologically empty Baptist church. Essentially,it was John Calvin who introduced me to St. Paul. Yet he certainly filled me with many preconceptions before he made that introduction.

St. Paul and I went on to have one of those relationships of paradox--at once dissonance and concord, though I would contend that much of the dissonance can be blamed on the introduction. Calvin, St. Paul, and I were constant companions for several years. I held dogmatically to the twin doctrines of predestination and limited atonement, and that God's sovereignty was complete, though his reasons opaque. That opacity was not like the mysteries of the faith--instead it seemed at times pernicious, even cruel. Out of one side of my mouth I sang "Jesus loves me" and out of the other I argued vociferously that God predestined many souls to eternal damnation in a literal hell to glorify himself. Quite obviously, the tensions there could not long sustain without snapping the theological rubber band, or else stretching it to the point of weariness such that it could no longer perform its function of keeping things together.

Finally, as a more-than-decade long personal crisis finally came to its climax, my religious house of cards collapsed under the weight of reality. Mr. Calvin and I didn't have coffee anymore, and St. Paul and I stopped doing lunch. Jesus and I remained friends, but the relationship became more distant, not out of anger, not even out of indifference, but rather merely out of fatigue. I delivered a final plea to the people who surrounded my upbringing, and it seemed that the meat of the message fell on deaf ears. That is when the fatigue really set in. I recognized that I needed to reexamine things, but I really didn't have the energy.

So I decided to distract myself with work and wine. The work was interesting, but frustrating. The wine was alluring, but empty. For just over a year (from October 2005-January 2007) I was in what amounted to a period of distracted agnosticism, a spiritual limbo where like Sisyphus I rolled my stone up a hill just to do it all over again the next day. The night life was not exciting and adventurous, it was dull and redundant. Like a metronome calibrated to tick off quarter notes in 4/4 time, the people of the restaurants and bars repeated the same routine evening after evening, weekend after weekend, with an emotionless devotion that made them more machine than man. To stop for but a moment and reflect on the vanity and meaninglessness would have been self-repudiation, and none would dare to face such an emptiness.

Very soon, however, I decided to do just that. For a thinking man, the allure of the empty soon wears off, and the obviousness of vanity is painfully on the mind at all times. And so, like a maid who had neglected one particular room of a house for far too long, I made my way to dust off the cob-webs of my spiritual self. Perhaps ironically, perhaps providentially, it was on Epiphany Sunday, 2007 that I first darkened the doors of the Church of the Incarnation, an Episcopalian Parish near Downtown Dallas. I did not know where I was going after that, but I knew where I was: I was home.

Like returning from a lengthy vacation, no matter how interesting or exciting the trip was, there is a distinctive comfort about going home, and my spiritual coming home was just that: comforting. I have heard the psuedo-spiritual inspirational preachers turn such ludicrous phrases as "there is no growth in the comfort zone and there is no comfort in the growth zone." This is not wholly untruthful, and much of our greatest learning comes from times when we are thrust away from what is comfortable and known, but the comfort I am speaking of is the kind that has fostered and unprecedented level of spiritual and psychological growth.

Although I had been introduced to Jesus many years before, and followed his example through Baptism, it was during Lent and Holy Week 2007 that for the first time I discovered the Christian Faith and Life. Jesus was no longer just a spiritual friend, or an ethereal example to be followed, but rather the full embodiment of genuine forgiveness, faithfulness, hopefulness, and love. For the first time I sang "These Forty Days," and contemplated Christ's fasting in the wilderness as I walked "this pilgrim-way of Lent." I learned what Liturgy was, and I marveled as its beauty. I was forced to encounter my "manifold sins and wickedness" and admit publicly that I had not "loved my neighbor as myself." And at the same time, I was thankful that I was a member "incorporate in the mystical body" of Christ and amongst "the blessed company of all faithful people" and moreover an "[heir] through hope" of God's "everlasting Kingdom."

I took part in the Eucharistic Mystery and feasted on the body and blood of Christ Crucified. I learned why Ash Wednesday was on the Calendar and was grimly reminded with black and gritty ashes that I am dust and to dust I will return while listening to the ominous words of the Misere mei, Deus from Psalm 51,

"Have mercy on me, O God, according to your loving-kindness, in your great compassion blot out my offenses."

Indeed, in 2007 I for the first time experienced the Ashes of Ash Wednesday, the Palms of Palm Sunday, the New Command, Stripping Away, and Betrayal on Maundy Thursday, the Emptiness of Good Friday, and the greatness of the Passover of Christ and the mystery of the Paschal Lamb at my first Great Vigil of Easter.

This year, my reflections and progress have been dramatically different. Where last year was my introduction to the Christian Faith through the Liturgy, this year has been my introduction to the Christian Religion through the Liturgy. Last year it was new--it was pageantry and spectacle, as I had never experienced it before. This year, it was familiar, but not in the boring and laborious familiarity of the outside world's grinding machinations, but rather the comforting familiarity of an old friend. Indeed, I came to understand this year that this thing we do, this Lent thing, this Holy Week thing, this Easter thing, it is something we do every year. And we do it the same way every year. And we do it with focus and devotion to carrying it out. It is ritualistic, but it is full of meaning, hope, and joy.

Like a mechanical instrument that must be re-calibrated on a regular schedule, and like a beautiful grand piano that must be re-tuned, our spiritual lives require that same re-tuning in order to remain virtuous and beautiful, in the way that Christ was always virtuous and always beautiful. Lent, Holy Week, and Easter represent this annual re-tuning and re-calibration. These rituals do not make us more robotic, but rather more human and more divine. But it is not something we can always be doing. And this is perhaps the most valuable realization I have come to on this Easter Day: our lives are represented by the Liturgical Calendar.

Just as crops do not benefit from being pruned and fertilized every day (though they must be fed and watered each day), we would not benefit from having Holy Week every week, Good Friday every Friday, and Easter every Sunday. Although Easter is my favorite day of the year, and my favorite Holiday, it would not be as special if we celebrated it every week. This leads me to the explication of the statement I made at the end of the last paragraph:

In life, as in the life of our liturgy, we cannot have Christmas without Advent, we cannot have Easter without Good Friday, and we can't have Maundy Thursday without Palm Sunday, nor can we have Lent without Ash Wednesday. And in between all of these things we must have Ordinary Time. Advent Prepares us for the Birth of Christ by reminding us that the Israelites waited the Messiah for centuries. Ash Wednesday reminds us of our mortality so we can appreciate the sobriety of Lent. Palm Sunday brings Christ to the focus of life, foretells of his Passion, only to have him give his parting words a few days later, witness his betrayal after giving us the new command, and then being turned over to pain and death. Good Friday is our period of emptiness, our experiencing of that pain, and though it is a remarkable thing, it is not one we can or should do everyday. And Easter is the restoration of all things. It is the celebration of life--indeed, of new life, resurrected life.

Our individual lives likely do not follow the liturgical calendar, but we can learn much from the liturgical calendar. We will have days of mourning, and we will have days of dancing. Each should be appreciated when it comes. The weeping as a reminder of our sin, pain, and mortality, the dancing a reminder of our blessings, life, and vitality. And in the midst of it all, there will be ordinary time. And we must appreciate that for what it is too, for it is what allows us to understand the feasting and fasting when those times come. There is no Easter without Ordinary Time either, for Christ spent most of his time on earth not suffering and dying, nor resurrecting. These were but brief, though significant moments in his earthly existence. Most of the time he was admonishing and teaching, serving and loving, praying and traveling.

With Holy Week behind us, and as we enter into the Easter Season looking ahead to the celebration of Christ's Ascension, let us utilize the time of celebration to prepare us for Ordinary Time. For I think we are keenly aware of our need for Lenten Preparation for Holy Week and Holy Week's preparation for Easter, but we must then prepare ourselves to settle back in to Ordinary Time, where we labor for Christ in the details of life, working to make our prayers a reality that

"Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

But for the time being, let us celebrate. The resurrection and new life we have through Christ is reason for much fanfare and much rejoicing. We are no longer captive to sin and death, hell and grave. The grave has been conquered, the sting of sin extinguished.

For, The Lord is Risen Indeed! Alleluia! Alleluia!