Anticipating Easter Eggs

23 Feb 2024 • Articles

This year Mothering Sunday is quite early, on 10th March. Passion Sunday is the following week on 17th March, Palm Sunday is celebrated on 24th March and Easter Day is therefore on Sunday 31st March. It is good that the relaxation of Lenten discipline comes on Mothering Sunday, which is therefore sometimes called Refreshment Sunday, the week before Passiontide begins our solemn consideration of the suffering of Jesus. Then, the reflections of Palm Sunday lead to Holy Week, and after the sadness of Good Friday we can fully rejoice on Easter Day.

Easter eggs are almost always popular, and they are an appropriate treat for springtime and Easter. A beautifully rounded chocolate shell with a pattern which looks as if it is about to crack open; sometimes empty and sometimes full of a delicious yellow and white creamy sweetness, made to look just like a real egg.

Why do we have eggs to celebrate Easter? If you can resist the joy of eating one long enough to look at it, you will see that it can also remind you of the goodness and joy of our Lord's resurrection.If the egg is empty, the rounded shell can look like the cave which was the burial place of Jesus - at first it is perfectly sealed, then, when it is opened, it shows that the tomb is empty, Jesus is not there, he has risen.If the egg is full, then it shows the goodness of God our Father in bringing the new life of the resurrection to Jesus and promising us that we can share in that new life, too. The new spiritual life is rich and full of energy, even more than a cream egg, and even more than an ordinary egg which brings new physical life.

Prepare for the joy and richness of celebrating Christ's resurrection on Easter Day by living more simply during Lent and thinking seriously about the selfishness, self-righteousness and sin which caused the suffering of Jesus on Good Friday. Then join your fellow Christians at the Easter service in church to praise God who has transformed our world, giving us the new hope of a goodness which will fill us all.

With every blessing for you on Easter Day, the most important day of the year,

Ann