Listen carefully to the master’s instructions and attend to them with the ear of your heart.

Rule of Benedict, Prologue

�ԴǾ�����.���ԴDZ�����.������������. The ceaseless clatter of our modern world often threatens to overwhelm us. The cacophony and rush of our daily lives, framed by shrieking news cycles and never-ending social media commentary and imagery, play around us like a strobe light, crowding out time for stillness, reflection, and understanding. It is easy to forget what silence and solitude look or feel like. It is easy to forget why we sometimes need to pause to look inside and listen inside.   

And then there is Lent.  

I fear that Lent has long suffered from bad branding, led by the question, “what are you giving up?” While fasting of some kind is certainly an important part of our Lenten journey, by itself it suggests little more than enduring or grinding out the 40-day period. It misses the larger point that, when combined with the other two themes of Lent – prayer and acts of charity and love – this time of year calls us to look inward to live more fully outward.    Lent challenges us not to step out but to step up. To listen carefully to the needs of those whose voices are too often lost in the din of the noise around us. To listen carefully for the presence of God. To hear God in the shadows and whispers of our lives. Lent does not call us to step away but to draw closer.   

As Lent guides us toward Easter, we can look to the Rule of Benedict for inspiration: It is high time for us to arise from sleep. Let us open our eyes to the light that comes from God, and our ears to the voice from heaven [to] run while you have the light of life (RB Prologue). We practice Lent inwardly through reflection, prayer, and personal conversion. But we live Lent outwardly in the ways we connect with each other and the world around us. Like a carefully tended flower, we bloom, and others with us. 

It is no small irony that this marvelous season of reflection and renewal – expressed through prayer, fasting, and charity – concludes with the joyous, and decidedly loud, celebration of Easter. Reflection and renewal seed new hope and great joy.

I wish our entire Prep community the blessings and hope of the Easter grace that awaits!  

JonMcGee
Head of School

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The seasons of the church’s liturgical year very often play out as a rhythmic from-to transition. The shift from Lent to Easter is no exception. For 40 days, we experience the quietude of reflection, repentance, and renewal that define the Lenten season, and then via the Triduum abruptly shift to the thunderous celebratory crescendo of Easter and the hope and joy it signals. From ashes to fire. Darkness to light. Winter to spring. Deep sleep to a feeling of tingling aliveness.

We are physically reminded of Easter each year in the form of the longer daylight hours and warming temperatures (much earlier this year!) that mark the transition of seasons – our exodus from darkness to light. As we celebrate the newness of spring and its palpable sense of new life, Easter reminds us of our need for renewal, in our lives, in our relationships, and in our world. Pope Francis offers us a particularly powerful message:

The Lord awakens so as to reawaken and revive our Easter faith. Let us not quench the wavering flame that never falters and let us allow hope to be rekindled. [We must] find the courage to create spaces where everyone can recognize that they are called, and to allow new forms of hospitality, fraternity, and solidarity.

In this season of renewal and new life, grace and astonishing love, I extend the blessings and hope of Easter to our entire Prep community!

Jon McGee

Head of School

Saint John’s Preparatory School

The post From Darkness to light: Transitioning from Lent to Easter appeared first on Saint John's Prep.