On Celebrating Easter
A blessed, beautiful Easter to all of you! :) I hope the glorious joy and peace that comes with Easter is still very much evident in your hearts and homes — after all, Easter has just begun! (We're celebrating for 50 Days, how awesome is that!)
Anyway, I know I shared with you in a previous post how we planned to "do" the Easter Triduum and Easter Sunday, so I just want to share what we actually ended up doing.
On Holy (or Maundy) Thursday, we ended up attending the Mass of the Lord's Supper at Sacred Heart Parish, a church near my in-laws' place in Cubao, instead of at our parish here in our village in Cainta. You see, hubby's grandmother, who is bedridden and ill, also celebrated her birthday on the same day, so we went to their place for her birthday celebration with family members on hubby's side.
We ended up staying longer than planned, even staying overnight (the kids were having so much fun playing with their cousins and bonding with family, they didn't want to leave anymore). So we weren't able to do our own washing of the feet ceremony as a family and also skipped the online Visita Iglesia. We did try to teach the kids about the symbolism behind Jesus' washing the disciples' feet (love and servanthood) and also watched these videos on YouTube with them:
The Easter Story – The Greatest Adventure - Stories from the Bible
For Good Friday (God's Friday!), we went back to our apartment in the morning and attended the Good Friday/Veneration of the Cross service in our parish. The kids were kind of tired when we got home, so we didn't do any crafts but just enjoyed spending time together. I'm grateful that Tim was mindful of the fact that we were fasting/abstaining on that day, and he contributed in his own way by "fasting" from the educational computer games that he loves to play.
Holy Saturday was spent cleaning up our apartment in preparation for our Catholic group's prayer meeting on Holy Monday. It was "summer cleaning," for us, since we don't really experience spring here. I also prepared the eggs and stuff for the kids' Easter Treasure Hunt, a modified version of the traditional Easter Egg Hunt. :) We didn't get to go to the Easter Vigil though. Hopefully we’ll get to go next year.
The materials I prepared for the kids’ Easter Treasure Hunt
The last two eggs for the Hunt contained “love notes” for the kids from Jesus.
Easter Sunday saw us attending morning Mass at our parish and going to my dad’s for lunch. We were joined by my youngest brother and a few Youth for Christ (YFC) leaders and missionaries from Timor Leste, who are here for the YFC International Leaders Conference this weekend. It was great to catch up with them and speak in Tetun again! (We used to be based in Timor as missionaries).
With our Timorese brothers and sister, hubby and my dad
The kids had a blast hunting for goodies on their Easter Treasure Hunt and eating the Easter cake their Tito Jay brought for them.
Ready for our Treasure Hunt!
Yummy Easter cake!
All in all, it was a truly blessed Easter for our family. I only hope and pray that the seeds of love and life in Jesus will continue to be sown in our kids’ hearts, as well as our own, throughout this Easter season and beyond, and eventually, bear good fruit. In the future.
Enjoy the rest of Easter, everyone!
