Weavings is a monthly reflection that is the collective effort of the Wheaton Franciscan Covenant Companions and Sisters to provide spiritual nourishment that helps us feel God’s presence in daily living and invite an openness to God.
Looking Back to Greccio from the Road to Calvary
by Dave Pfeifer, Covenant Companion
It is March and now mid-Lent. This year, with Lent and Easter so early, the boundary between Christmas and Easter seems a little fuzzier, a little more porous, at least for me. Maybe that is why this year I have been struck by the similarities in some of the significant images of Christmas and Easter; parallels that I have never noticed before this year.
This year for Advent, we recreated the nativity scene that was first brought to life by St. Francis at Greccio. We had a beautiful indoor cave waiting to receive Jesus on Christmas. A mirror was placed in the manger, and we spent Advent looking into the mirror and imagining ourselves into the scene of Jesus’ birth.
This year, I can’t help but see the parallels between Lent and Christmas. At the end of Lent, another cave awaits Jesus and us. This cave is much more somber and foreboding because it is the cave that will serve as Jesus’ tomb. But, like the nativity cave where Jesus was born into his human existence, the cave of the tomb is the place where Jesus’ resurrection into overflowing new life begins.
Other parallels present themselves: the wooden manger receives the baby Jesus and the wooden cross receives Jesus on Good Friday; the star announces Jesus’ birth and a solar eclipse occurs at the time of His death; angel choirs herald His nativity to shepherds in the fields and angels announce His resurrection to the disciples.
All things I have been pondering as I make this shorter than usual journey from one cave to another. All of us at Weavings wish you a most blessed Lenten journey!
What a beautiful reflection! It inspires me to take time to be in the quiet of the incarnation cave and in the cave of death that leads us to the new life of resurrection. If we truly listen in the silence of each cave, we will hear the call to truly BE and BECOME divine love in our world today.
Sisters Bea and Sylvia