Easter Sunday Butterflies. At the beginning of Lent, I noticed a swarm of caterpillars devouring one of our gardens. The bulb leaves – big and small were a mess but before I moved in to pick, kill and spray, I remembered how Easter time here on the Capricorn Coast is the time of the butterflies. So I left the caterpillars alone, looking ugly themselves and making the garden ugly. I waited in what looked like failure. Now it is Easter and we are surrounded by hundreds of butterflies – blues, yellows, and blacks, and of course the glorious multi-coloured Jezebels. The butterfly has been a traditional symbol of the resurrection of Christ. The ugly caterpillar chewing away at the garden gives little sign of the beauty to come when it emerges from its chrysalis. Jesus beaten, tortured, rejected, dead gives little sign of the radiant life to come when he emerges from the tomb. At the Resurrection the women are told to go and tell the disciples to remember – remember the time in Galilee when Jesus preached, healed, was transfigured, when he transformed people’s lives. As they remember the good that Jesus did in the ordinary life of Galilee, they will start to understand the Resurrection. So it is for us. We need to remember the times when God has transformed our lives, to remember the times when life seemed a disaster but God brought something totally unexpected out of our sin or failure. These are our times of Resurrection pointing to the fullness of life in Christ
Sr Kym Harris OSB |