Happy Easter! I don’t know how your Holy Saturday was in your part of the country, but ours was gray with a steady drizzle or rain. Our Church Easter egg hunt was scheduled for 1 pm in the afternoon and I had to get my teenager to Church at 11:30 am to help with set up. Right when they pulled the bags of eggs outside, the drizzle started. There weren’t a ton of people helping put out the eggs, so I decided to join in spreading the eggs out across the grass. I was, unfortunately, not wearing a raincoat and unbeknownst to me my nicely blown-out hair soon began to expand, becoming a mass of messy, untamed waves. I took this picture of myself afterwards, because I was laughing at the fact that I had no idea how insane my hair was looking until I got home. I can only imagine what people at the egg hunt thought of my hairstyle—haha!
The next day, Easter Sunday, I found myself being sprinkled once again, but this time it wasn’t rain. Easter Sunday in Tennessee was a beautiful, blue skies and sunshine kind of day. The sprinkling was holy water at Easter Sunday Mass where we also renew our Baptismal vows each and every year. I started thinking about the fact that millions of Catholics all over the world were doing the same thing this Easter Sunday, and also those newly baptized Catholics becoming members of the Church this Easter.
If you have been listening to Catechism in a Year with Fr. Mike Schmitz podcast, you recently listened to symbols of the Holy Spirit, the first of which is water. The Catechism of the Catholic Church 694 states:
“Water. The symbolism of water signifies the Holy Spirit’s action in Baptism, since after the invocation of the Holy Spirit it becomes the efficacious sacramental sign of new birth: just as the gestation of our first birth took place in water, so the water of Baptism truly signifies that our birth into the divine life is given to us in the Holy Spirit. As “by one Spirit we were all baptized,” so we are also “made to drink of one Spirit.” Thus the Spirit is also personally the living water welling up from Christ crucified as its source and welling up in us to eternal life.”
Millions of Catholics were renewed by this living water yesterday, remembering or better yet recognizing this new birth in our lives with each and every Easter. What does this have to do with my hair? Consider it inspiration of the Holy Spirit…but I thought about how my hair changed without my doing anything, just because of the rain. And so, I thought of how the Holy Spirit works through the waters of Baptism…and how special it is to renew those promises each and every year alongside my Church family ALL.OVER.THE.WORLD. (It’s one of the things I love about Catholicism—the unity of our many traditions happening on the same day across the world.)
And so on Easter, as I was sprinkled with the Holy Water and later spoke all that I believe as a baptized Catholic, the same promises my parents spoke on my behalf some 40+ years earlier, I thought about what must happen to my soul each Easter. A welling up…courage…enlightenment…new conviction… The Holy Spirit makes a splash in my life with a sprinkling of Holy Water on Easter and continues that ripple effect on my soul with each and every renewal of my Baptismal promises. It gets messy sometimes, this Catholic faith, which challenges us to live in many ways counter-culturally, but let’s ride the waves the Holy Spirit creates in our lives, knowing it will lead us to the shores of eternity.
Are you feeling different after yesterday? Happy Easter and many blessings as we look forward to the continued Easter season and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in our lives!
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