I love the seasons. It is hard for me to pick a favorite. Maybe because I tend to be a positive person or maybe because I am so indecisive, but I just really love the good things about each season, while at the same time, I am usually very ready to let go of the ‘not so good’ parts when the season is changing to the next. For all but two years of my life, I have lived in regions of my state that experience all 4 seasons in their fullest: extreme heat in the summer and extreme cold in the winter and everything in between as the seasons change. I understand why people choose to live in more moderate climates, but for me, the changing extremes are the best way to live. When I lived in Honduras, I left Washington’s summer and arrived in October to an eternal summer. Now, if pressed, I will say that summer is probably my favorite season. I definitely prefer being hot over being cold. However, my experience of summer changed when it became ‘never-ending.’ There were days the heat seemed unbearable. It felt inescapable. I remember using adjectives about the sun I had never used- words like ‘harsh’ and ‘cruel,’ and ‘beating down.’ It wasn’t usually even as hot as the hottest weeks of the summer I was accustomed to, yet, the fact that there would be no relief in sight is what made it unbearable.
In “The Screwtape Letters,” C.S. Lewis says, God, “has made change pleasurable to them, just as He has made eating pleasurable. But since He does not wish them to make change, any more than eating, an end in itself, He has balanced the love of change in them by a love of permanence. He has contrived to gratify both tastes together in the very world He has made, by that union of change and permanence which we call Rhythm. He gives them the seasons, each season different yet every year the same, so that spring is always felt as a novelty yet always as the recurrence of an immemorial theme. He gives them in His Church a spiritual year; they change from a fast to a feast, but it is the same feast as before.”
Although, my time in Honduras was a year spent in a year long summer, it was the first time I was fully immersed in the liturgical seasons of the Church. For those who may not know, liturgical churches have seasons. There is the season of Advent, which prepares for the season (not just day, but season) of Christmas, the season of Lent, which prepares for the season (50 whole days!) of Easter, and there is ordinary time. The season of Lent is a season of fasting. The seasons of Easter and Christmas are seasons of feasting. The whole year follows the life of Jesus- followers try to spend 40 days with Him in the desert during Lent, they walk with him as he was condemned, suffered and died on Good Friday, and then they celebrate his resurrection for 50 days culminating with the celebration of Pentecost. Liturgical life is an embodied life. The spiritual realities are not just contemplated, but they are lived and expressed in tangible, physical ways. There are also special feast days, think of them like birthdays, throughout the year to celebrate special saints who have become like dear friends to certain communities. If you drink green beer on March 17th you can thank the Irish Catholics for celebrating St. Patrick’s feast day, Valentine’s day is thanks to the Italian Catholics celebrating St. Valentine. The tradition of stockings at Christmas originally came from celebrating the feast day of St. Nicholas on December 6th. In the U.S., these holidays are so commercialized, the spiritual significance has mostly gotten lost. In Honduras, it was another experience completely. These are a people who know how to celebrate. They know how to feast. I think they know how to feast, because they also know how to fast.
There were times, living in Honduras, the government would just shut off our water…for days. When this happened during Lent, as we were entering the desert with Jesus, it felt, well, appropriate. Meals there are often simple anyway; beans, rice and tortillas- sometimes for both lunch and dinner. We may not have been fasting all the time, but the baseline was much lower. On Palm Sunday, we didn’t just flap skinny palm branches around, we walked a mile from the church waving giant palm branches and joining in the procession, singing “Hosanna in the Highest.” On Holy Thursday, after the priest had washed the feet of 12 people, we followed Jesus to the garden. We walked late into the night following the crowd that had hoisted a statue of Jesus onto a large platform. On Good Friday we attended a live Via Crucis, and we shouted with the crowd to “crucify him” because we know it was really each of us that put him on the cross. Artists had used sand to create beautiful, intricate scenes in the road- a road that would be trampled on tomorrow. Then Holy Saturday was nothing, empty, waiting, silence. I knew there is never Mass on Holy Saturday, that the altar and church is stripped of all beauty, all décor, yet I had never experienced it so profoundly as when I walked in our little chapel to pray and found the tabernacle empty. Jesus’ body was taken away. I nearly felt the need to say along with Jesus, “my God, why have you abandoned me?” Then, on Easter vigil that night, we entered a dark, quiet church, little by little more and more candles were lit until the entire grand church was bright and rejoicing. Our neighborhood partied after the service late into the night, feasting on tamales they had prepared for days and drinking a special kind of egg nog. Kids ran around in the street going door to door, feasting on whatever treats the neighbors had prepared. Christmas was a similar experience. Even though I was still feeling summer heat, I was experiencing the intensity of the changing of the liturgical seasons.
Every day, my community read the prayers from the liturgy of the hours. On Fridays, we would remember Jesus’ crucifixion, there were many prayers of laments and sorrowful mysteries to contemplate. Sometimes, my mood or minor sufferings of my day matched well with the prayers of lament and sorrow, and sometimes it didn’t, but my mood is not what mattered; I was entering into prayers that were being prayed all throughout the world. I was entering into a rhythm that didn’t revolve around me. Christianity is not supposed to be a “feel good” religion, a self-help journey of positivity. So, if I didn’t have my own laments to bring to the Lord on Fridays, I would lament for those who do. On Sundays, the prayers were of rejoicing and hope and promises of abundance. The promises of flowing streams were the object of intense desire after being in a parched land for so long. And so, there was a rhythm of fasting and feasting even in our weekly schedule. We didn’t eat a lot of meat throughout the week, but Sundays, we almost always had chicken. If someone gave us some special treats or deserts, often we would save it for our Sunday celebration.
I have been back home in the U.S. for 15 years. The reverse culture shock I felt when coming home has long ago passed. I try my best to live the liturgical seasons, but I find it much more difficult. Advent is supposed to be a season of waiting, yet I find my patience disappear if Amazon delivers a package even a little late. I never have to wait on much of anything anymore, so “practicing” waiting becomes almost completely abstract. In Honduras, if I sent a letter home, I might not get a reply for a month. Giving gifts feels more like an obligation when we know our friend or family can just buy whatever it is they need anyway. Promises of abundance don’t carry much concern when we already have more materially than we could possibly need. Living in our temperature controlled homes, in an eternal season of feasting, in cities that never experience darkness or silence, causes us, amazingly, to tire out of feasting. No wonder the seasons of Christmas and Easter only last one day and have so easily been commercialized…there’s not that much difference from one day to the next. Lacking the embodied experiences of the liturgical seasons, it becomes mostly cerebral. I might think about Jesus’ suffering and the suffering of the poor, but I am disconnected from it.
The feasting and rejoicing that we do during the seasons of liturgical feasting are supposed to be a small foretaste of the “heavenly banquet.” I think many of us, myself included, are so used to perpetually feasting, so used to always being surrounded by material abundance and comfort, that we’ve forgotten this material abundance was never the real goal. We are confused why we aren’t satisfied by all these worldly pleasures and how people with so much less can seem so much happier, healthier and whole. Without a time of fasting, feasting in this world, becomes monotonous. Rejoicing in the hope and justice that is to come, without lamenting for and joining with those who are still suffering becomes absurd.