For many reasons this Easter Season has been a very special and memorable one for me. I found inspiration in a very peculiar way this month. It all started a few days ago when I first sat down to prepare this particular blog entry. Just as I began to get comfortable, I felt an overwhelming urge to take a short break from my writing to get a wheatgrass juice shot (a small nutritional supplement of concentrated juice made from shoots of wheat plants).
Being the relentless worker that I am, I tried suppressing my craving. However after an hour or so I realized that these feelings were not going away (and I didn’t want this distraction to inhibit the quality of my writing), so I gave in. It had been more than a year since I had my last wheat grass shot, and in my all excitement I had completely forgotten about what was about to happen.
The second that grass water touched my tongue, Boom!, it hit me and I remembered - first came the gagging, then the wave of nausea, and lastly the goosebumps. I still cannot comprehend how I had ever forgotten that wheatgrass juice is the most fowl tasting substance in existence.
A few hours later I could still taste rusty lawn mower on my lips. As the day progressed the taste faded a bit, but my energy level did not. Without realizing it, I was sitting up straighter, breathing more deeply, and thinking more clearly. All in all, I felt more confident and thoroughly alive throughout the day.
When I returned to my writing a few days later, my mind immediately returned to the events surrounding the wheatgrass drink (most likely because the taste had not completely diminished!). My body’s intense craving for the juice’s nutrients; the unpleasant period after the first gulp which then initiated one of the most productive days I have had in months. I was struck by the surprising parallels between that experience of drinking wheatgrass juice and my journey through Lent and into the Easter Season.
In order to become transformed by the Resurrection, we must first willingly share in Christ’s death. The Lenten Season symbolizes the hardships which we endure now, while the time after Easter represents the everlasting happiness that is to come in our futures. I am coming to understand the importance of inviting Christ to accompany us in our times of trouble if I eventually want to share in his resurrected life. Even though I struggle to see Jesus in my personal darkness as well as in larger world injustices, I pray to always remember that this suffering is not purposeless and that it is not in vain, but behind it is a plan of love. And in the end, God’s love for us always prevails.
Although the unpleasant taste of the wheatgrass juice is an unusual comparison to the crucifixion of Jesus, this experience has nevertheless inspired me to look for all the other things, in this year particularly, that bring me “new life.” For this reason I find Easter to be the most precious liturgical season- because the story of Jesus’ Passion and Resurrection is so easily relatable to the human experience on any level.
This Easter has brought rejuvenation to my mission to actively carry out the call of sharing the Good News of the Risen Jesus for the remainder of my year.
This is so true. Unless we die to ourselves, we do not receive life. Fr. Quentin Hakenworth, SM wrote a book called The Grain of Wheat in which he talks about this. It is based on Chaminade's System of Virtues.
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