One Season Following Another by Sr. Margie McGurie

Have you ever noticed how the seasons of the year set a natural rhythm for our lives? Like migrating birds, we move with the sun. We seek warmer climates in winter, or settle into our dens to drowsily dream of the return of spring. While Pennsylvania winters can seem interminable, they do give birth to the most delightful of seasons: spring. Perhaps it is because the cold winds, barren trees, and deep snows have made us long for the green earth again that the blossoms seem so sweet and the warm rains so welcome. It almost seems necessary that we lose touch for a while with the productive powers of nature to appreciate anew her creative, fruitful energies. Finally, the fall colors arrive in splendid contrast to the constancy of summer’s green.

And we are amazed. Who taught the seed-bearing plant how to reproduce its abundant fruits? Who directs the insects and the breeze to carry pollen? Who taught the birds how to rebuild nests, or caterpillars how to emerge from their cocoons? Rhetorical questions. We know Who. From planting to harvest, from fallow to fertile fields, one season following another, our God allows the sacrament of the Paschal Mystery to be seen in the cycle of nature’s dying and rising.

And what about us? Are there not seasons of the heart, cycles in the faith life which cause us to die and rise, break and mend, be gathered in and poured out? “There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens. A time to be born and a time to die . . . a time to tear down and a time to build . . . a time to weep and a time to laugh . . . a time to keep and a time to cast away” (Ecc.3). The author of this sacred book says that God has made everything appropriate to its time and has put timelessness into our hearts without our even knowing it. Sometimes we confuse our time (chronos) with God’s plan, God’s time (Kairos). We expect peak celebrations to carry us on a wave of euphoria much further into the future than they are capable of doing. We think the pain of past events should be permanently healed once and for all, yet we are ever reminded of them with each new loss.

But that’s okay. Take a lesson from the rhythm of nature. Our lives are not fixed in stone. Old wounds sometimes do reopen, but tears do give way to joy. Our work does not always culminate in success, but there will always come another season for starting over. Relationships are not always sweet and attractive, but hope springs eternal in the human heart. Let the seasons unfold—within and without—knowing that the ever-Creative One who controls the chaos, who banishes the darkness, who raised Christ Jesus from the dead, has a plan for us and for our world which is lovingly unfolding through all the seasons of our lives.

Sr. Margie McGuire