The Great Fifty Days

The people of the “liturgical church” are a weird bunch of folks. So out of step with culture! They always have been. I’ll get to our current season in a moment, but first, let’s look at Christmas for example. The general culture knows Christmas is one day of the 365 in the year. It’s generally understood all the hubbub comes in the weeks leading up to it, getting ready with gifts, decoration, and such. Christians do plenty of that prep too, but there is more. The Church steeped in the traditions of liturgy through the centuries observes the principal celebration on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We see it as opening up twelve days of the Christmas season.

The church is even more out of step with the culture regarding Easter. Popularly, Easter is one day for egg hunts, decorated baskets, jelly beans and chocolate, and maybe brunch. Christians might have fun with all of that as well, but there is more. It is a spiritual day of great meaning, that launches Easter Week, Sunday through Saturday, and also (this is the wild part) a full fifty days of focus on the resurrection: a long Season, indeed.

Easter Day is the main observance, the Christian Paschal Feast. Theologically this celebrates Christ as the Paschal Lamb, such that death passes over all who put their trust in him. Sin and death are conquered, as the resurrection of Jesus ushers in life eternal to all who look to him in hope. The reason we extend the celebration for seven weeks—every day from Easter Day to Pentecost Day, inclusive—is because all our hope is founded on this astounding victory of life over death.

I do not recommend eating chocolate bunnies or Cadbury Eggs throughout the Great Fifty Days of Easter. I do recommend, however, that we take heart that as Christians we stay with the theme of resurrection, praising and adoring our generous God. Just as Lent is often a long season of devotion, you can design for these Fifty Days some practices that will deepen your connection to God. It so happens that it is exactly forty days until the Eve of Pentecost.  This will probably not shock you, I would recommend prayer and study. (Clergy are so predictable, right?)

Here is the important part: Design for yourself some prayer and study from today through May 23 (Pentecost), but do it to encounter God. Let each session of your reading, study, or prayer be your soul’s invitation for God’s revelation. This is not a light thing to add to Christian devotion, I realize that. I feel safer keeping study and prayer as a routine personal exercise. But a bolder and more fulfilling mode is to intend something more. We are not needing more information, knowing more about God, so much as we are needing to know God. We do not need checkboxes to keep affiliation with God; we seek a day-to-day relationship with the living God.

There is every possibility that you already have a practice that works for you, to keep your faith very strong and your relationship with God deep. So, in that case, there is no need to adopt new practices. I hope the practices we have for the Easter Season and the long haul carry the intent of the experience of God. I think of the prayer of the thirteenth-century bishop, of St. Richard of Chichester. We might know the abbreviated form of it since it has made it into hymns and such:

Day by day, dear Lord, of the three things I pray: to see thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, follow thee more nearly, day by day.

This is the intent: the encounter with God. I think we should bring to every day and every devotion we have. To live with such intention throughout the season of Easter, would bring us to a powerful experience of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. I am certain of that.

I love the privilege of conducting Morning and Evening Prayer (every day except Sunday morning). I love offering Prayer Training sessions on Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings. I love teaching and facilitating quiet Christian Meditation on Tuesday afternoons and Thursday mornings. These are all offered through video conferencing in real-time, and information about accessing them and the times of offerings are available on our Sunday announcement pages and our website. My aim is not just to be busy and make others even busier. I will take my own recommendations: I will work intentionally to be open to the experience of God within all of these offerings. We want The Great Fifty Days of Easter to be a season that is great not only in length but great because of the One we encounter, the wondrous God of love.