My Eastern friends (Catholic and Orthodox) don't celebrate the resurrection for another week. I've heard a couple jabs from them about why the Western calendar is wrong, and I don't really know how or who worked out the calendars, but I think it's interesting that the Son rises in the West before he Rises in the East. Hooray for semantic fun.
This went through my mind tonight:
With pretty much every one I know, especially people I know well, at least once I've felt that love so strongly that I was convinced I'd be utterly willing to die for them.
Then something happens and I find out I'm not willing to do smaller things for them. My emotions go reeling and I am ashamed.
It's a painful reminder that as much as I think I love, I don't love strongly enough. As much as I think I'd die for someone, I don't actually know, and I won't actually know until/unless the situation comes up.
You? I love you. My heart is weak, though, and I fail often. But I'm not letting it stay that way. I can do all things--even love--through Christ who strengthens me.
Who strengthens my heart.
It's those little, daily sacrifices that count as dying. St. Therese of the Little Flower called it her "Little Way." This is the way that most of us will grow in holiness. These are the chances we have to be more like Jesus, because he usually doesn't give most of us those big, splashy ways to martyrdom, like he did for St. Sebastian. When we pray the "Hail Mary," the "hour of our death" may not be our final hour, but the death we need to die right now, for this person who needs my sacrifice at the moment. This "hour of our death" may be in the middle of the night with a crying baby or a crying friend or in obedience to an employer when asked to do an unpleasant project. It's these little deaths that prepare us for our last death, after which, death will be no more.
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