WIWS: Surrexit Christus! He is Risen!

Happy Easter, everyone!

NEW, IN-SEASON Dress: Jessica Simpson collection, Lord & Taylor. Yay for sales and coupons and birthday money! And Zooey Deschanel wore it too! If my iPhotoBooth had a paparazzi-quality lens, I could capture the joy that this mint color is. Of course, I added what I call a “modesty tab”…hooks onto your bra–no bunching or extra weight like a cami. 🙂

White cardigan: Old Navy.

It was nice and sunny and warmish Easter morning, so I did well with a rain coat. Then it got windy and overcast, so the high of 59 did not feel as warm as it should have.

Reflection: The Triduum is my favorite liturgy of the year. This year, I received what I call Good Friday “grace,” which I wasn’t really attuned to until Saturday morning. After waking at a hideous hour after a disappointing amount of sleep, I roused myself enough to get to morning prayer at my parish. Though Lent was at an end, I had a goal to speak to Person involved in the whole “discontent” issue I mentioned last week. The “Good Friday grace” I received compelled me to just say “yes” to what was offered to me: do a reading during the prayer (I hate public speaking); assist with decorating the church for the Vigil (but I wanted to get to L&T before the special coupons ran out). By saying yes, I was graced with making new acquaintances and even receiving a compliment for my reading! The preparation for decorating was physical work, but the good kind of physical and Easter lily pollen reminders of the day decorating my sweater. And as you can tell by my photo, still made it to L&T in time for a coupon. 🙂 But the biggest grace of all was to have a truly splendid rest of the day, the weight off my heart lifted, and on Easter night, I called Person a very nervous girl and hung up a much more relieved and happy girl.

Modern Meditation Monday – It’s Still Sunday

Happy Easter! and Happy Sunday…

Easter is so joyous that we Catholics celebrate for eight days – an octave. But this is no ordinary octave – it is an octave of Sundays.
In our hyper-scheduled lives, it can be hard to wrap our heads around eight of the same-named day in a row. It certainly doesn’t feel like another Sunday – we’re back to work! But liturgically, Sunday it is.

Today, and for the rest of the week until Divine Mercy Sunday, we celebrate the Resurrection as if each day were Easter Sunday. Daily Mass will feature a sung Gloria, and the readings will feature the many different experiences people had following Jesus’s rising again.

In the regular calendar year, Sundays are a time to slow down, savor the time for rest, and celebrate the Mass. So for Easter, we should embrace this opportunity to slow down, savor this special time, and celebrate Mass – living out the joy in context of the rest of our week.

Since we can’t recalibrate our PDAs to reflect this time-shift, what if we used them to track one thing we can do to recognize it as a “Sunday?”