Its called Eastertide, the days and weeks after Easter Sunday when the joy of Easter and resurrection sweeps Christians along toward Pentecost, which comes 50 days after Easter, or June 4 this year.Pentecost, the so-called “birthday of the church,” celebrates the descent of the Holy Spirit onto the apostles and Christs followers 10 days after his ascension to heaven. Pentecost marks the official launch of the Christian faith by its first devotees.
Eastertide runs seven weeks until Pentecost, according to the Christian liturgical calendar.
Next Sunday, April 23, is known as Low Sunday. The name is believed to be derived from the fact that by the time a week had passed after Easter, believers may have been low, or down in the dumps, that they would have to regroup now without Christ. Things would never be the same.
For many churches, Low Sunday is a low-attendance Sunday. Regulars take the Sunday off to recover from all the extra demands placed on them during Lent and Holy Week. Of course, those of the Christmas-and-Easter crowd are missing again. After all, they wouldn’t be back two Sundays in a row.
Low Sunday has also been known as White Sunday, Quasimodo Sunday, Alb Sunday, Antipascha Sunday and Sunday, according to Wikipedia. And since 1970, Low Sunday has been officially known as the Second Sunday of Easter in the Roman Catholic Church. Pope John Paul II further designated it Divine Mercy Sunday.
The Fellowship of Merry Christians calls for churches to spend Low Sunday in a free-wheelin’ good time. They’ve renamed it “Holy Humor Sunday” or “Bright Sunday with the call to ham it up. Choirs can surprise the congregation by playing kazoos or showing up in bathrobes instead of choir robs. Some churches have put out sleeping bags for people who want to sleep during sermons that day.
Yet with Easter now past, it is a time for pastors and church leaders to take stock of the impact that Lent and Holy Week had on their faith communities.
Did they reach new people with the Word? With the carefully crafted Easter sermon? Was the Easter experience uplifting enough or so compelling that visitors will return again?
Enormous energies were expended to make the Easter experience. What do they have to show for it?
Easter came three weeks later this year, so the unofficial end of the church year — usually about the time that regular school dismisses for the summer — will come quicker.
Now most church staff are taking time to recoup, even taking some days off. The remaining weeks of spring will be used to close out the Sunday school year, hold mother-daughter banquets, celebrate the work of volunteers and take care of those last things that will get maximum attendance before folks scatter for the summer.
Look for the hard-core church-goers to be there this Sunday — unless, of course, some Christmas-and-Easter Christians show up, committed to a new habit, and opt to see what goes on there the rest of the church year.
