This week is a major week—perhaps the major week—of the Christian calendar. The liturgy recounts and enacts the dramatic arc from Jesus’s persecution, betrayal, and death at the hands of Roman authorities to his resurrection on Easter Sunday. This central event also marks a transition from the somber, reflective season of Lent to the celebratory season of Easter. In New Haven, this transition has coincided nicely with the first glimmers of spring. Irises have just shot up from the ground in East Rock.
What the start of February is to New Year’s resolutions, Holy Week can be to Lenten resolutions. During the forty days of Lent, many Christians choose to give up something
indulgent—like meat, candy, or screen time—to commemorate Jesus’s forty days of being tempted by the devil in the wilderness. Some fast outright. This year, instead of giving something up, I decided to take on something new: community service. I’d been feeling guilty about failing to “give back” during my time at Yale, so I resolved to start
volunteering at the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen. I imagined it becoming a weekly ritual. Admittedly, I imagined it would make me a better Christian.
But by the time Lent is over, I will only have volunteered there twice. This is better than nothing, but certainly not what I’d hoped. I’m reminded of how resolutions humble us,
underlining how easy it is to fall short of goals we set for ourselves (never mind those set by others for us). Yet the comfort of Easter, for Christians, is the affirmation that we have already been forgiven our shortcomings. This can be a powerful reminder for non-Christians, too: others forgive us constantly, love us regardless. We need only to believe it, to forgive ourselves. Allowing myself this grace, I can resolve to keep volunteering whenever possible without freighting the act with that old guilt. As spring sets in, what old resolutions or goals—like perennial flowers—might you coax back to life?