With new delight

That Easter dawn He looked with new delight
upon the world’s known loveliness...
~ From Easter Gold, by April O'Leary RSCJ 

For many of us, there has been an intensity and a joy around this Easter which will make it memorable. Last weekend we celebrated our first "proper" un-simplified one, with singing and all the liturgies, since 2019, giving depth to emotion and newness to the familiar. There were times when I looked with new delight upon the well-known loveliness of familiar hymns and readings, greeting them like old friends, long unseen. I was glad I had planned to have a quiet time over the Easter Triduum, and could spend time with these friends, drawing everything together. 

My new delight had its roots elsewhere - for me, Easter 2022 will be memorable for another reason. A startling, powerful encounter with Jesus during Passiontide deepened during Holy Week, spilling over into the Easter Triduum. The Easter Vigil readings are, of course, our salvation history, but last Saturday they also became mine - my history, but also my present. I too have been - am being - loved into being, created in God's image and likeness; I too have been - am still being - liberated, brought back, held on to, chosen, called, delighted in; I too have been given a new heart, and God continues to make me his. I too know God's everlasting covenant and steadfast love, just as I too am missioned to make all this love known "among the nations".

And by Easter Sunday morning all this was segueing into a quiet, leavening joy, as, with new delight, I gazed on gold-translucent daffodils amid the unmistakable sureness of Christ's presence within and around me. In the Octave week since then I have savoured anew each day's encounter with the Risen Jesus; these Gospel readings too have been old friends, invested with a new freshness. 

Passiontide's encounter is still within me, indelibly so: and though the intensity has receded, something of it lives on; a stirring and a calling in my memory. And grace, of course; that remains, as grace always must, quietly powerful even when it feels like little more than a whisper gently washing over me. Long may I feel its effects, and delight anew at God's and the world's known loveliness...