Planning Easter with the Wisdom of the Irish

What have you planned for Easter? It is only three weeks away now or 21 sleeps – if that is how you anticipate exciting events.

Last year I wrote about the importance of Christians using Easter, especially Good Friday, for Christian purpose. Easter gives us public holidays to spend time prayerfully reconsidering our Lord and Saviour’s death and resurrection. This year, again, the Cathedral has a full programme of church gatherings, our Good Friday afternoon Convention on the “What and Why of Easter” and the evening presentation of Handel’s Messiah.

How we spend our discretionary time tells us, and especially our children, about our real priorities in life. Work and housework have to be done, but what we do on holidays and where we spend our time, when we have the choice, reveal what we really think life is about. Sport mad parents raise sport mad children, just as nerds raise bookworms and computer geeks because children judge and imitate what they see us do more than what we say or instruct. And in that, children are not wrong. For what we do, especially when we have a choice, says more about who we are and how to live than anything we may say to the contrary (Deuteronomy 6:4-9).

This weekend the Irish are celebrating St Patrick’s Day. It doesn’t have much to do with the Welshman known as St Patrick, or his missionary evangelisation of Ireland. It is really about being Irish – or of Irish descent. For some people in Australia, that ancestry is such an important part of their identity that they take the time and effort to organise and attend a great parade through the centre of Sydney. Their ‘Irishness’ is more than just a hobby, it is them – who they are and what they hold as important. Not to celebrate with each other would be to lose themselves. Giving time and effort to celebrate like this tells their children who they are. Keep reading