As a child I always felt that spring was the perfect season for Easter. When I was dressing up in smart patent leather shoes, white gloves and a pastel dress that made twirling worthwhile, it just seemed right that the flower boxes should be blooming with pastel flowers and forsythia bushes bursting with yellow blossoms.
As we made our way to Easter Mass, the newly green lawns and freshly budded trees were a lovely backdrop to the Easter parade of parishioners decked out in new finery.
Spring, I thought, was like Easter clothes for the earth.
What I didn’t understand until years later was the significance of new clothes as an Easter symbol of new life.
In the ancient Church, it was customary for those newly baptized into the Church, usually adults, to wear white clothes to symbolize their new life in Christ. We still see this symbolism today when a white bib is placed on a baby being baptized and the white pall placed over a casket during a funeral. The pall recalls the white clothes of Baptism and Jesus’ triumph over death through his Resurrection.
From the first white clothes of the newly baptized, it became the custom in many places to dress in new clothes and walk in procession as a sign of respect for the sacredness of the day. As hundreds of years passed, the focus was often misplaced on the new, and often expensive, clothes and fashionable bonnets for women.
The famous New York City Easter Parade, which started in 1880, is an example of a parade that became famous mostly as a means of showing off Easter finery. At one point, more than a million people came to view the pageant which began to lose its religious significance.
As we make our final preparations for the celebration of Easter, the many symbols of new life so popular today provide a wonderful opportunity for simple lessons on the real meaning of Easter.
Coloring Easter eggs, donning new clothes, admiring the lilies and spring flowers that decorate the Church, even eating chocolate bunny rabbits, can serve as lessons on the new and abundant life that is ours as a result of the Passion of Jesus. We just need to take the time to engage our children in conversation.
Easter is the perfect time to talk with children about the true meaning of joy, and to help them understand that real joy is not something that comes from the things we buy, but from the gifts of God.
Pope Francis can help us put it into words: “The Christian identity card is joy, the Gospel’s joy, the joy of having been chosen by Jesus, saved by Jesus, regenerated by Jesus; the joy of that hope that Jesus is waiting for us, the joy that - even with the crosses and sufferings we bear in this life – is expressed in another way, which is peace in the certainty that Jesus accompanies us, is with us."
The Holy Father’s prayer for joy can also be our prayer, asking that the Lord “graces us with amazement in his presence, in the presence of the many spiritual treasures he has given us; and with this amazement, may he give us joy, the joy of our lives - and of having our hearts at peace even when faced with many difficulties. And may he protect us from seeking happiness in so many things that ultimately sadden us: they promise much, but they will not give us anything! Remember well: a Christian is a man, and a woman, of joy, joy in the Lord; a man and a woman of wonder ."
(Pope Francis’ words are from a 2016 homily at Mass Monday morning in the chapel of the Santa Marta guesthouse.)
Mary Regina Morrell is a Catholic journalist, author, and syndicated columnist who has served the dioceses of Metuchen and Trenton, New Jersey, and RENEW International in the areas of catechesis and communication.