Daffodils, jonquils, stocks – it’s beginning to look like and have the smell of spring! All of a sudden it seems as though daylight lasts a little longer, and the sun seems to shine a little more brightly. There is a sense that the earth is gradually re-awakening as the fruits of the hidden underground work are starting to be revealed. It is a season of growth and great beauty. With the eyes of faith we cannot help but be drawn into a sense of wonder about God’s presence in our world expressed in creation.
And spring proclaims new life! Our lives are not always in sync with the natural season, however. Sometimes we may be experiencing the autumn of life in the midst of spring. Just as the season around us seems to sing with joy we may be in the midst of a mourning time, wishing that the trees reflected our sense of loss by losing their leaves not growing them. The very thought of new life may seem impossible to us. Even the brightness of the sun contains a shadow.
But perhaps this is the lesson the season of spring offers us. Regardless of how we feel or what we are experiencing it is a sign that new life will always emerge. Robert H. Schuller, an American poet and Christian evangelist expresses it this way: “Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods. Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass. The spring will come”.
So let our hearts prepare for spring! Pope Francis in his encyclical Laudato Si (On the care of our common home) notes that ‘A sense of deep communion with the rest of nature cannot be real if our hearts lack tenderness, compassion and concern for our fellow human beings (n. 91). Perhaps this is a clue to cultivating a spring heart: just as the daffodils are emerging from the safety of the warm earth perhaps we are being invited to take a little risk with our hearts. To be more tender and kind and to turn our face to the other. To open our eyes to the wonder of the world around us in order that we may show that the world really does proclaim the glory of God. And to remember that the paschal mystery is for us not a memory, but a pattern of our lives.
In the words of the prayer attributed to St Francis of Assisi:
Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O, Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled
as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
it is in dying that we are born again to eternal life.