Vol. 1, Issue 7: Eastertide

Liturgical living this April

Apr 16, 2024

From the editor

If I’m being honest, friends, this year’s Easter season hasn’t felt particularly… Easter-y. Between traveling and teething and incredibly early mornings (why, oh why, did the baby wake up at 4:30am and still skip her morning nap?), I have struggled to enter into the joy of the season.

And that’s precisely why editing this issue of Signs + Seasons has been, paradoxically, a blessed grace for me. Reading Carolyn’s essay about her garden was such a consolation. Sakari’s lovely poem really gave me a moment to sit and consider the ways in which the Lord is still moving in this season. Pondering the beautiful painting that Roseanne shared helped me enter into the complex emotions that Peter and John must have been feeling as they listened to Mary Magdalene’s report.

All in all, I’ve been grateful for the opportunity to pause, to reflect, and to remember that the joy of the Lord can coexist with the mundane, with the chaotic thrills of toddlerhood, with the deep regrets about how little time I choose to set aside for prayer each day. Editing this issue has reminded me that the expectation is never for me to pursue a liturgical lifestyle to the detriment of my vocation as wife, mother, and writer. Rather, it is in and through the duties of my vocation that the Lord wants to meet me with this Easter triumph and Easter joy.

In this month’s issue of Signs + Seasons, you’ll find a variety of reflections on the paradox of living as an Easter people in a fallen world, as well as some practical ideas for prayers, activities, and relationship-builders to draw on over the coming month.

Finally, before we jump in,

Dixie Dillon Lane

and

Kristin Haakenson

and I would be so grateful if you would take a few minutes to share your thoughts with us. Especially in this time of “spring cleaning,” we’re pondering how we can best serve the church and this guild through each issue of Signs + Seasons. Your feedback helps us immensely!

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We hope that this issue of Signs + Seasons is a balm to your soul over the remainder of this Easter season. Please keep us in your prayers, and know that you remain in ours!

In Christ,

Sara Dietz

Eastertide

Experiencing Childbirth in Light of the Resurrection

| S+S EDITOR |

Dixie Dillon Lane

draws our attention to the ways in which the labor & delivery experience parallels the journey of the Triduum:

In childbirth, we allow our bodies to be placed almost literally on the cross, laying down our lives for Christ’s littlest ones, whom we have carried in the tabernacles of our bodies for nine months. Unlike Christ, we are not innocent, but like him we do offer ourselves up willingly and wholly for crucifixion with our marital fiat.
But then, the moment the baby is placed in our arms, the crucifixion is over, and we experience the fullness of the Resurrection. It’s about resurrection, friends! It is not the pain, but the life!

Read Dixie’s honest and beautiful thoughts here.

Easter: A Season of Joy

K. C. Ireton

shares a personal story of death-and-resurrection, as well as the history of the Easter season, in this delightful passage from her book, The Circle of Seasons: Meeting God in the Church Year.

From early in Christian tradition, Easter Sunday was the day new converts were baptized, often in catacombs, as a physical reminder that they had died to their old selves and been raised to new life in Christ. During the fourth and fifth centuries, the week after Easter, called the Easter octave, was a time of intensive instruction for these newly baptized, who continued to wear their white baptismal robes for the entire week as a symbol of their new life.

Read KC’s reflection here.
And don’t miss her Liturgy for Easter, a beautiful guided prayer for personal or familial use.

Peter and John Race to Christ’s Tomb

Roseanne T. Sullivan

reflects on an image of Sts. Peter and John—on Easter morning, racing to confirm what St. Mary Magdalene has told them—and the ways in which we ourselves often struggle to remember and believe that which the Lord has told us:

The Gospels of Easter are surprisingly full of accounts of the apostles and the disciples not believing one another when told that the Lord had risen. And let’s not forget about doubting Thomas, who was gone when Jesus appeared in the upper room and refused to believe his fellow Apostles when they told him what they had seen.
Jesus had told them all many times He would rise again. Their forgetfulness is amazing. Sort of like ours.

Read the rest of Roseanne’s story here.
And don’t miss her fascinating history of the Regina Caeli (the Marian antiphon for Eastertide) here.

Remember His Wounds

Sakari

offers us a beautiful poetic journey through the Triduum and into Easter, looking at the season through the lens of Christ’s wounds. She invites us to ponder our own doubts, our own belief, and the ways that God is still working in our lives.

Oh see the wounds in His hands and His side
Remember our Lord crucified
Recall the water and the blood
Oh see the costly price of love
The psalmist’s cry has now become Christ’s own
Left by God, forsaken and alone.

Read the rest of Sakari’s lovely poem here.

Isidore’s Bad Etymology and the Garden of Liturgical Life

Carolyn, Medievalist Mama

reflects on her garden—in which each plant grows and bears fruit on its own timeline—and offers a word of comfort to those of us for whom Lent and Easter don’t feel life-altering:

I think Isidore’s garden holds the answer. The liturgical year, like the natural world, has a comforting degree of predictability. Christmas follows Advent, and Easter follows Lent. But while the richness of the liturgy shines forth on momentous occasions, it is not absent in the inconspicuous feriae, the prayers and scriptures of which might provide badly needed spiritual food for one who failed to find a spiritual transformation in his or her Easter Basket.

Read Carolyn’s essay here!

50 Activities for the Easter Season

Steffani Aquila of His Girl Sunday has a super simple, practical list of realistic, doable celebrations for the Easter season! Whether you’re looking to increase your own awareness of the full season, you’re trying to build up a liturgical living community of other adults or families, or you’re trying to draw your kids deeper into the mysteries, there’s something here for you!

6. Make an ALLELUIA banner to hang in your home.
11. Begin meal time prayer with one person saying "He is Risen" and have the rest of the family respond with "He is Risen Indeed". (We started this and I have been enjoying it more than what may seem normal.)
18. Keep white flowers in your home throughout the season.
28. Create Easter sidewalk messages for your neighbors/community to see as they drive or walk by.

Check out Steffani’s full list here.

On Conjunctions & Eastertide Birthdays

Steph Ebert

invites us to hold space for the gruesome and the glorious in the midst of our daily lives, especially on days that really ought to just be special, as we join her for a less-than-picturesque birthday:

My husband and son made me supper the night before, worked all afternoon on an orange-chocolate cake, delivered darling presents in the morning wrapped with too much tape.
But the actual day had the feeling of a run-away train, where you can see from the beginning it is going downhill fast, and no matter what cheerfulness and goodwill and energy and internet searches for toddler crafts you throw at it, it just keeps going down.

Read Steph’s essay in full here.

Annunciation

Better Together: Annunciation Gathering