It never rains on Easter

‘We must remind the world that if Christmas comes in the depth of winter,it is that there may be an Easter in the spring.’ –– Fr. Horacio de la Costa, S. J.

It may rain on your parade, or on the Independence Day parade, even on your garden wedding reception.

But it never rains on Easter Sunday. It never rains on a child’s Easter egg hunt.

I haven’t checked the archives of the weather bureau to validate my observation, and I do remember a warning from the weather bureau to have an umbrella ready because rains were expected during Holy Week 2009. The rains never came.

I don’t remember having had a rainy or gloomy Easter Sunday in my life, ever, literally. Looking at the fuchsia bougainvilleas outside my window bathed by the vibrant sun on Easter morning, it hit me that the Easter Sundays of our lives will be always a sun-shiny day. For why has God given us sun-filled Easter mornings, even in this age of global warming and freak weather conditions? A sunny Easter Sunday is almost like a promise from the God who gave us His only Son so that we, redeemed from sin, will have eternal life.

Sure, we will have our Biyernes Santo moments. We will suffer betrayal, sometimes from friends, in the Maundy Thursdays of our lives; we will have crosses to carry in the Good Fridays of our days; suffer a limbo of sorts, whether in relationships or career paths, in the Black Saturdays we must endure.

But our souls will always have a bright Easter Sunday, the shrouds over our grief-stricken hearts and confused minds lifted, as if by angels. Easter Sunday really is like the light at the end of the tunnel. This feeling ceased to be a figure of speech to me during my visit to the Cu Chi tunnels in Vietnam, dug out by the guerillas for their surprise attacks on American troops. They would crawl in these tunnels and emerge in enemy territory and seize it.

With a daring I never thought I had, I crawled into a tunnel, a short one. Despite my wide hips, I squeezed into the tunnel, started to crawl. Thought it was a piece of cake till I reached the heart of the tunnel, and was hit by the stirrings of claustrophobia. In the midst of the tunnel, the darkest, quietest part of it, you cannot turn back for there are other tourists behind you. As in life, you just have to keep on moving forward, inch by inch and guided only by one thought — reaching the light at the end of the tunnel. After a while, that light is all that keeps you going. Easter Sunday is that light after crawling through the Good Friday tunnels of our lives.

The sun will come out tomorrow, and bet you your bottom peso it will be out on Easter Sunday. The Easter Sunday of your Lenten calendar (the most important feast in the Catholic faith), the Easter Sunday of your personal calendar — your personal calendar of highs and lows, of good years and bad years, of red-letter days and dog-eared pages.

I read somewhere that sunny days really melt away depression — and that more people get depressed during the cold months, when the days are short and the nights, long.

We have over 300 days of sun in the Philippines, and therefore over 300 days of sun therapy. But the realization that Easter is hope and redemption, that on the third day, third year, third hour even, we will rise from the depths of the pit of our anxieties, petty intrigues, worries and sufferings, is the best sun therapy of all.

Just like Easter.

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Sometimes the most meaningful journeys we take are those that take us meandering into our soul. My own spiritual journey started and ended in my home, specifically at my window sill, where the sight of my bougainvillea in full bloom made me worship the Source of all light in even more.

In this sun-shiny state (hope it lasts), I looked up an e-mail forwarded to me by my sister Valerie. I haven’t validated all the facts it contains, but the email only reinforces what I know for sure. That the God who doesn’t bring down the rains on Easter Sunday has it all planned out for us.

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Think about it!

God’s accuracy may be observed in the hatching of eggs.

For example;

-The eggs of the potato bug hatch in 7 days;

-Those of the canary in 14 days;

-Those of the barnyard hen in 21 days.

-The eggs of ducks and geese hatch in 28 days;

-Those of the mallard in 35 days.

-The eggs of the parrot and the ostrich hatch in 42 days.

(Notice, they are all divisible by seven).

The lives of each of you may be ordered by the Lord in a beautiful way for His glory, if you will only entrust Him with your life. If you try to regulate your own life, it will only be a mess and a failure. Only the One who made the brain and the heart can successfully guide them to a profitable end.

God’s wisdom is seen in the making of an elephant. The four legs of this great beast all bend forward in the same direction. No other quadruped is so made. God planned that this animal would have a huge body, too large to live on two legs. For this reason He gave it four fulcrums so that it can rise from the ground easily.

The horse rises from the ground on its two front legs first. A cow rises from the ground with its two hind legs first. How wise the Lord is in all His works of creation!

God’s wisdom is revealed in His arrangement of sections and segments, as well as in the number of grains.

-Each watermelon has an even number of strips on the rind.

-Each orange has an even number of segments.

-Each ear of corn has an even number of rows.

-Each stalk of wheat has an even number of grains.

-Every bunch of bananas has on its lowest row an even number of bananas, and each row decreases by one, so that one row has an even number and the next row an odd number.

-The waves of the sea roll in on shore twenty-six to the minute in all kinds of weather.

All grains are found in even numbers on the stalks, and the Lord specified thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold –– all even numbers.

God has caused the flowers to blossom at certain specified times during the day, so that Linneus, the great botanist, once said that if he had a conservatory containing the right kind of soil, moisture and temperature, he could tell the time of day or night by the flowers that were open and those that were closed!

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Happy Easter to all! (You may e-mail me at [email protected])