The Spring Will Come

Spring is starting here in Southern California. After months of an unusually dreary season, the light is beginning to peek through the clouds and the cold, wet ground is beginning to warm underfoot. I’m sure that all sounds silly to the real cold-weather folks but as simple as it is, a few rainy months is the real deal for those of us born and raised on sunshine.

I’m always grateful for the real expression of grace extended to us through the natural world. The ebb and flow of dark to light and heat to cold; it's cyclical in a sometimes achingly painful way. We’re not often ready for it, or we feel like the season ahead was just here. I think sometimes our liturgical life can feel a bit similar—Lent again, a little bit of penitential darkness . . . again. But then, without fail, comes the Light. It warms us at the core and radiates out, beyond us even and to the world.

Years ago, I remember holding one of my children at the Easter Mass while the Alleluia was being sung. I'd had a particularly useless-feeling Lent, and I don’t know if I felt like I had exactly “earned” an Easter just yet. Those silly temptations of not doing enough nagged at me. And while the season of Lent is not about doing at all—I still found myself wanting to feel more, or to have experienced more. Yet there I was, truly basking in the sound of this Alleluia chorus with a rush of unruly tears coursing down my cheeks.

I knew deeply, and truly, that that Alleluia was mine, not only despite my failings, but because of them. For as often as we struggle, our Easter always comes. It’s always on the road ahead, like the springtime and the thawing sunlight. Our Easter is here. We truly are its people, and hallelujah is our song.

Our Easter is here.Click to tweet

Have you ever heard the Alleluia from the Divine Liturgy?

Blythe Fike is the wife of Kirby and mother of 8 smallish kids. She loves the quiet life in small town SoCal. You can find out more about her here.