Staying awake for Easter
What ritual remedies exist to sharpen our spiritual attention, focus, and clarity?
Easter offers Christians a spiritual wakeup call.
For some, the call is literal. Many denominations observe the tradition of an Easter Vigil, keeping awake late into—if not always through—the night before Easter Sunday. In doing so, they symbolically keep faith with Jesus during his entombment. By elongating the night, the vigil sharpens the yearning for Easter morning and the deliverance it heralds.
This hyper-vigilance need not be restricted to Easter alone. As Thomas Merton memorably put it, “The spiritual life is . . . first of all a matter of keeping awake.” Nothing else of significance can happen if we sleepwalk through our spiritual lives. How, then, might one extend this attentiveness throughout the year? And what other ritual remedies exist to sharpen our spiritual attention, focus, and clarity?
