The church is pretty much the shaper of our spirituality and in the liturgical season of Lent we spend forty days preparing for the resurrection of Jesus and seeking it with joy says St. Benedict. Sometimes we forget that the Easter season is fifty days and so the church is telling us that in a certain sense this should be a greater celebration than even Lent.

I think it= s a little more difficult for us because I think culturally we have practices for Lent that are more personal and we have exterior signs that are more readily available and stripping things away so we take in Lent a little better than we take in the Easter season. We do decorate the church but we decorate it all the time so it doesn’t create anything new. There= s no impact that is connected to this Easter season.

Yet the fact of the Easter season is precisely that all that Jesus did by his passion, death and resurrection, those that labor, if you want to put it that way, produce a fruit. It is the season of Easter that is to pay attention to the works and the fruits of the labor of Jesus therefore, the joy that belongs to the season is a sober joy. It’s a joy in understanding what the effectiveness of the richness of the conquering of death and sin and Satan that Jesus accomplished. It’s unfolding is described in each Sunday and even beyond in the works of the church and the saints. So the issue of the Easter season is precisely to be aware of this and to therefore grow in faith and grow in the awareness of the living presence of Jesus.

So one of the first powerful realities is that Jesus is more alive then he was on earth and he= s available for all of us and each of us and the whole world. Which is a phenomena that= s pretty hard to absorb but if you are a practicing Catholic, if you pray faithfully and you are receiving the sacraments you should have a greater sense of the presence of the Lord in your life. So this is the first thing that should be a fruit of the Lenten season in terms of our own life.

One of the fruits is in Chapter 17 of John= s gospel which will be used by the church on the seventh Sunday, but now is becoming Ascension Sunday so it get obscured, the fact is it= s the recalling of the prayer of Jesus at the Last Supper. What is Jesus praying for? Jesus is praying for the accomplishment of all his works, which means that the victory that Jesus has won is going to happen one day, that is, all mankind is going to be united with God for all eternity. So since his prayer is efficacious it= s going to happen. So one of the attitudes that we have that flows from that surely should be the fact that we have the victory, and that there is only one real boss and that= s the Lord and he= s working to accomplish this. So the same Jesus that walked the earth is pursuing each person and therefore he pursues us also to do the same thing that he did while he was on earth to get us to be converted. The difference is that Jesus is not chasing us like a detective or policeman in order to condemn us but rather to bring us to repent and to receive new life. So the presence of Jesus= active presence is now more effective in our life than ever.

Then we could say about other things, the life that he offers the light that he offers, the way and the love that he offers is now more abundant and available to all of us. So the question is, are we paying attention to this active work of God? Each year the most powerful gift that= s given as a fruit of the passion and death is the gift of the Spirit which is the ending of the Easter season. Because in the power of the Spirit then we have all that we need to live the Christian life fully forever. So it’s moving in that direction.

We need to reflect on how we celebrate the Easter season, whether it is a season for us of joy, the sober joy of deepening our appreciation of all the works the Lord has accomplished in his passion, death and resurrection.