(Paschal basket image from https://stgeorgecharleston.org/paschalbasket/ which explains all the pieces that go into the basket, and what each represents.)
Lent draws to a close and Pascha nears the horizon as a light in the darkness. It has been a trial of patient endurance, learning new things, and gaining a small degree of resilience.
The Orthodox mantra is “Carry on and suffer!” In our western minds, it is such a negative connotation captured in those few words.
But the real purpose of suffering is growth. Like a seed that must be buried in the ground, have a form of death and regeneration below the surface, each year we undergo such a death of sorts. It is a small step forward that forces our ego centricity to die a little more. Each year, like the seed, we poke our heads out of the soil of trials as a different person – hopefully a better person. Someone who has learned to trust just a little bit more on God and less on ourselves.
We don’t control everything in our lives, as much as we think we do. Life throws us curveballs to try to get our attention to that fact. We have a choice: to accept that, try as we might, we cannot make death disappear, or the loss of something precious in our lives. It isn’t chance, nor fate. It is purposeful; intentional. And, once we pass through the stormy seas and reach safely to shore, we can look in retrospect and see just how far we have come…if we don’t push back on the waves.
The light is beginning to dawn. Like the sun on the horizon in the East, our hope from the East has given us a reprieve. New life, new growth within us has begun to come to the surface of our introspection.
Now is the time to truly rejoice. Participation in the process will have us arriving at a place we hadn’t thought we’d ever reach.
And it give us the strength and experience to remember that, in the coming years, every Lent isn’t a time of punishment. It is a time to rejoice in the suffering and to look forward to what we will become on the other side.