Again let us give some thought to the journey: Easter is present within us and around us. The Lenten journey has brought us to the gift of an encounter with Jesus in a significant way. Hopefully the days of this most recent Lent have strengthened our legs for the spiritual journey of our entire lives. Hopefully these past forty or so days have brought a deeper awareness of change and growth through a discovery of the graces that God offers for the sacred journey to him. Hopefully these days have brought you beyond spiritual exercises simply for exercise sake. Hopefully this journey has been an invitation to an awareness of the voice of intuition. Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully ... because on this day of Easter we celebrate hope and its fulfillment.
The picture above is of a labyrinth. "Google" the word and you will find yourself walking the discovery of an ancient symbol that is related to our wholeness. The labyrinth is a metaphor for our life's journey. This may have happened to you during the days of Lent: meandering along the paths that have made the journey real may have opened for you the labyrinthine walk deeply into your very being, your very relationship with the God whose gift to us of his Son and their rich promise, now fulfilled, of redemption, of salvation.
Hopefully this Easter Sunday is very much like the center of the labyrinth for you: a place of resting. We rest this weekend with the Lord after a tiring and perhaps painful journey revisiting or rediscovering for the first time, why Jesus suffered and died for ME. The last week of Lent, from Palm Sunday to Holy Saturday, has been the experience of being in the center, the core of the labyrinth. Here we encounter a time of resting, a time of just letting God's graces pour over us. The feelings may have been numerous and varied. For most people, aware of this inner place or not, there is the emptiness of Good Friday evening and Jesus' resting in the tomb on Saturday. It may be an emptiness not often associated with emptiness for here there is a unique encounter ... divine presence surrounds, fills, overwhelms.
"He is risen!" Mindful of this reality, we begin the journey out of our labyrinth. We travel back the same way that we entered but ... but ... but ... YOU, I ... we are different. We may pass others we know or don't know. Hopefully we are convinced that this labyrinthine pathway is a sacred path that truly has helped you and me come to know ourselves better than ever before. Hopefully that awareness, despite the dents, the bruises, the rough edges encountered, allows us to see in each days sunrise a reminder that Jesus' rising affirms God's promise that he is with us always.
A very different Easter reflection, no doubt. Nonetheless, may you find a time this weekend to experience the peace simply reflecting on the walk you have made during the Lent of 2008 --using the labyrinth picture. On one "goggled" source, there is this simple Latin sentence: "Solvitur ambulando." It is solved by walking. You, perhaps without realizing it, have been walking the labyrinth these last forty days. Now you return to the "ordinary" world of your life, hopefully with a new appreciation of the gift you are to those you encounter because you have come to know how blessed you are by the reality of the empty Easter morning tomb.
