We’re an Easter people — so don’t be like Pinky

These days my memories of preadolescence recede as rapidly as my hairline, but some early recollections of celebrating Easter with my family remain. Among these are dressing for Easter Mass in the best of our Sunday best, posing interminably for family photos by the flowering plants in our front yard, and the rush to find our filled Easter baskets and the sugary rewards that lay within. And Pinky.

The inexplicably named Pinky was an all-white rabbit found by one brother or another rooting about in my father’s garden one day, for which he would receive a life sentence within a rabbit hutch. Easter Sunday was the only day Pinky would be let out of his cage, no doubt due to his affinity to the egg-planting bunny of folklore.
 
Once all the eggs hidden in the yard were collected — save for the one Dad would always find a week later with his lawnmower — Pinky was set free on the back lawn for additional Kodak moments. Not "free" in the truest sense: our developmentally disabled eldest brother, Paul, would kneel and keep two enormous hands on either side of Pinky in case he decided to make a beeline for Mr. McGregor’s garden. There was little risk of such a caper: Pinky weighed 20 pounds if he were an ounce and was in need of a good workout regimen. Whatever we were feeding that sluggish lagomorph, it was too much. Perhaps life in a cage had made caging unnecessary.

Within an hour, Pinky would be returned to his hutch along with a tasty carrot, and the family would repair to the house to feast on hard-boiled eggs, kolache, and the ever-present marshmallow Peeps. At some point during the evening meal — served on Mom’s "good" dishes — inevitably someone would retell the story of an Easter past when my brother George allegedly raided everyone’s Easter basket and chomped off the ears of every chocolate bunny, an anecdote promptly countered by George’s spirited denial. To this day, it remains among the family’s great unsolved mysteries.

Before my age reached double digits, Easter pretty much meant egg hunts, chocolate, and extra church services. I didn’t make the connection as to how Easter eggs and bunnies symbolize new life, pointing us to the resurrection of Christ and to our own hope of resurrection. As adults, we are called at Easter, the Church’s highest feast, to reflect with joy on His resurrection and our redemption in Christ.
 
"You are an Easter people," St. Augustine wrote, "and your song is alleluia." But we are not an Easter people solely at Easter, and so that "alleluia" song should be in our hearts, minds, and souls every day, especially at every Mass.
 
If it isn’t, if we only let out the joy of our faith on special occasions like Easter, then we risk allowing our faith to atrophy and become sluggish — like Pinky.