I made up my mind that this Easter I am going to live and act like it really is Easter and not just a season called “Not Lent.” The question is how to do this. “Not fasting” can’t be the entirety of the answer and “not praying” and “not giving alms” don’t seem like good Easter fare either. The answer must be “joy.” But the next question is how to live this joy. After all, the advice “Be joyful” doesn’t seem specific enough—sort of like if someone were to give you the moral advice “Do good, avoid evil.” Excellent advice, but breaking it down a little more might help.

There is something about the Dominican way of life that people notice even if they cannot articulate it right away. The very atmosphere of the place, whether church or chapel or convent or monastery seems to be instilled with the peace and joy and awe that comes from the contemplation of God. All the monasteries of Dominican nuns are wonderful in just this way. Today I would like to draw attention to one in particular: our Dominican monastery in West Springfield, MA.

Dei Verbum, Vatican II’s Constitution on Divine Revelation, says of the Old Testament that its principal purpose was to prepare for the coming of Christ through prophecy and “types” (DV 15). For his own part, St. Thomas Aquinas says essentially the same thing: the Old Testament taught about Christ implicitly through figurative depictions and portrayals. But have you ever wondered if this might be a rather roundabout way of preparing for Christ? If you wanted to teach someone about something, wouldn’t it be easier just to tell them about it straight out, explicitly?

On the feast day of a great saint with All Saints’ Day approaching, it seems to be a good time to reflect on the worth of seeking the intercession of the saints. I have often encountered people who find it odd that God would let the saints in heaven know things just so that they could turn right around and pray to God about them. While it certainly is mysterious, if we keep our eyes peeled while reading the Scriptures, we can see many places where God tells his saints on earth something that they wouldn’t otherwise know precisely so that they can pray to Him about it. Whether or not we understand the reason why, we can at least see that God’s providence works in this way. And if we reflect on this mystery with prayer, we can begin to see the wisdom and generosity which underlie the intercession of the saints.

Was true holiness possible before the coming of Jesus Christ? What was the point of the Old Law if it could not save? And if grace and salvation come from Jesus Christ, how could people be saints before the Incarnation (cf. CCC 61)? These are some of the most common questions I received this summer, when I was giving talks to members of the Dominican Laity. The answers are all in St. Paul, but it is quite understandable if, having read his epistles, one still doesn’t have all the pieces in place. After all, we have it on the authority of Scripture that in St. Paul “there are some things hard to understand” (2 Pt 3:16).

At the beginning of his papacy, one of the very first things Pope Benedict wanted to recall to the attention of the Bishops, priests, deacons, religious, and lay faithful was the following: “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction” (Deus Caritas Est, 1).

What is it that makes a relationship with Jesus different from a relationship with any other human being? The answer has to do with the grace of God. How we habitually think about grace, therefore, affects everything in and about the Christian life.

What’s the value of a virtue-based account of the Christian moral life? Why complicate morality with complex considerations of human nature and abstruse ideas like grace and happiness? Can’t we just find out the rules and follow them?

That won’t do, because Christian perfection as portrayed in the Beatitudes and life of Christ isn’t just a technique of rules. The funny thing about rules is that it’s pretty easy to come up with a strategy that avoids breaking them, yet still misses the point. Instead of an abstract proof, allow me to illustrate with an example.

Last Friday an article by professional food developer Barbara Stuckey appeared in the “Life and Culture” section of The Wall Street Journal. Ms. Stuckey writes that, though she loves her job, she is “constantly frustrated by the unwillingness of most Americans to try foods that challenge their palates.” Americans, she says, tend to cling to their favorite bland foods, and these tend to be loaded with sugar. “Expanding our repertoire of foods isn’t just about exploration and new pleasures,” Ms. Stuckey explains, “It’s also the first step toward eating a broader, healthier diet.” Instead of simply bemoaning the problem, she provides practical, concrete steps to self-education that actually sound like they could be fun.

As I read the article, it occurred to me that her observations could also be applied to musical taste. Indeed, the metaphor of “taste” turns out to be very apt.

This spring, when the weather turned nice, I went outside to “exult in the day the Lord had made.” As I searched for words to express my delight, I tried to remember some of the best spring poems I knew. My Dominican brothers will probably not be surprised that I thought of an ode by Horace, nor that I started reciting it to myself: Diffugere nives, redeunt iam gramina campis arboribusque comae. “The snows have fled, the grass returns to the fields, and the leaves to the trees.” I wondered how the rest of it went, and remembered that a noted scholar had called this ode, celebrating the arrival of spring, “the most beautiful poem in ancient literature.” Back inside, I looked it up and saw, to my surprise, that its celebration of spring lasts only about six lines. After that, we are introduced to the main theme:

Today is Ash Wednesday. Lent is upon us once more, and over the next few days we will all be taking up spiritual disciplines of one kind or another, each according to his or her circumstances and state in life. During this season in particular, we are invited to adopt practices from all three of the traditional categories of Christian observance—prayer, fasting, and works of mercy—and so to open ourselves up to God’s grace in an authentic and integral way. While all three are very important, prayer might be said to have a certain priority. Prayer is, after all, the only thing Scripture tells us to do “always” or “continually.”

This Lent, I would like to propose for our consideration one of the most popular and venerable forms of Lenten prayer, the Stations of the Cross. Specifically, I would like to recommend the Stations in their traditional, fourteen-part form, ending with the Burial of Jesus and stopping short of the Resurrection, which many people add to the Way of the Cross, calling it the “Fifteenth Station.” Far be it from me, of course, to presume to forbid anyone from concluding the Stations with a meditation on the Resurrection. I simply notice that in some circles the deep meaning and significance of the Via Dolorosa, the “Dolorous Way,” seems to be in danger of being forgotten. The traditional form of the Stations, celebrated on Friday and concluding with the Burial, is in fact eminently fitting in at least four different ways: liturgical, historical, mystical, and practical. Let us take a brief look at each of these.