Life-teen update (04-08-2007)

A very happy Easter to you all. I hope that you all had an enjoyable spring break and are rested up and ready to finish out both the school year and the Life-teen year on a strong note. Our Spring break kickoff extravaganza did not go off quite as we had planned, and by that I mean that there were only four people in attendance. So after a brief emergency core team meeting, we decided to postpone the festivities and did something completely different. Oh well, this just means that those of you who were unable to come (which was most of you) haven’t missed out on the festivities that will now be used to celebrate the end of the Easter Octave. The Easter season has always been one of my favorite times during the liturgical year. We have spent the last forty days building up for the greatest event in the history of the world, the death and resurrection of our God. This is the time where we have been able to really hone our focus on the price of our salvation. How great a god we have that he was willing to come and die for us so that we might live with him. This is the season where we celebrate true love. Unlike Valentines Day, where we simply have a few weeks of build up followed by half the candy in the world going on sale, this is the big one. Easter shows us that Love is not all about candy, hearts and flowers. It is not something that is here today and then everything goes on sale tomorrow because it is over. Well, maybe it is in the secular world; but I generally choose to just ignore what hallmark has to say about the holidays because they rarely get it right. For the Church we have the entire octave of Easter followed by the Easter Season. Love is something that is eternal, and it involves suffering. My mentor once told me of a girl that came up to him once and said that she though she was in love with this boy. He asked her how she could be so sure? “Well,” she said, “I have this feeling of butterflies in my stomach, my face gets flushed, and I can hardly sleep at night.” His response to her was, “How do you know that you don’t just have a cold?” When he first told me this story I laughed, and then didn’t really think much about it. Later it came back to my mind and I decided to roll it around for a while. I realized that what he had been trying to tell the girl was that real love is more than a feeling. Feelings come and go, but love is a choice that remains constant. You can love someone even when you are mad at them, even when they disappoint you. More often than not, love involves suffering. The love that Christ set up as an example for us to follow was one of humiliation, betrayal, suffering, and death; but it is also one of new life, of conquering death and fear, of joy that can only be found in God. This is what love is, and this is what we rejoice in. As someone far wiser than me once said, “the only way to Easter Sunday is through Good Friday.”