Day Dream (unfinished) Dante Gabriel Rossetti

I need Easter badly this year. Not because of my chosen penance for the 40 days of Lent.  I need it for the promises and hope it brings. The Triduum is done – The stripping of the churches on Thursday in anticipation of Good Friday.  

Dante Gabriel. Rossetti Stain glass  Jesus Teaching

All that was left was the altar, the sanctuary candle, and whatever sun shone through the stained glass (supplemented by electric for safety’s sake).  We were told the story of fear and ultimate betrayal for the sake of political expedience and 30 pieces of silver and ultimate shame of one’s actions.

Mnemosyne Dante Gabriel Rosetti

Good Friday brought its stillness and silence – the churches are quiet, but for footsteps and a periodic clicking of rosary beads.  The dimness encourages introspection – self-examination, an acknowledgement of human frailties and fears.  There is a sense of the past – how worn and smooth the pew rails are, how the walls seem imbued by years of incense and burning beeswax.  One wonders who else watched dust motes dance colored by the stained glass.

Mary Magdalene Leaving the House of Feasting Dante Gabriel Rossetti 185

I have thoughts of the women: the Marys and Magdalene….The courage it took to witness horrific things and the unquestioning way they dressed the body of the one called ‘Messiah’ and went back to the tomb on the third day risking soldiers and harassment to get a message from an angel.  It seems to make sense that they would be the ones.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti Proserpine

It’s no mistake that Easter is the start of the Christian liturgical calendar and is calculated as the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox. (Yes. It’s a run-on phrase just the way we recited it in lower school.) We need the longer days, a higher angle to the sun, the warming and giving back of the earth.

 The Blessed Damozel, Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Yes.  I need Easter this year.  I need to know I can let go of burdens too big for my skinny shoulders. I need to remind myself there’s a bigger plan out there somewhere and I am but the proverbial grain of sand in the cosmic scheme.  I need the sprouts, the colors and smells, and, dare I admit, Easter lilies and magnolias, and tete-a-tetes.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti Ecce Ancilla Domini. 1849

Whether you believe or not, I leave you this quote (one of many scribbled on a Post-It in my purse): “Easter tells us of something children can't understand, because it addresses things they don't yet have to know: the weariness of life, the pain, the profound loneliness, and hovering fear of meaninglessness.”

Yes. I’m ready for Easter.

Mary Beth Devine, Guest Contributor

Art Direction Michelyn Camen. Mary Beth wrote this article in remembrance of those who were injured and especially for thosewho lost their lives in the terrorist attack in Bruxelles, Belgium March 22, 2016. For their loved ones, their families and for all of us.