Easter is this Sunday, so wear your pastel-best for church and egg hunts.
Don’t do what I did many times and wear your church clothes for any Easter egg hunts. Grass stains are much tougher to get out of dress pants than rugged denim jeans or from a pair of dirty knee, if the weather was warm.
Course, with the spirit of going “off the cuff” in the halls of the Vatican these days, it’ll be apropos to hunt in whatever gear you find. What’s this cuff stuff?
On Palm Sunday, Pope Francis ignored his prepared text for his homily and simply asked the throng in St. Peter’s Square if their lives needed a little fixing, according to wire reports.
“Has my life fallen asleep?” Francis asked after listening to a Gospel account of how Jesus’ disciples fell asleep shortly before he was betrayed by Judas before his crucifixion.
“Am I like Pontius Pilate, who, when he sees the situation is difficult, washes my hands?”
After the 2 1/2 –hour ceremony, he shed his red vestments and posed for a few “selfies” with youngsters from Rio de Janeiro, in his native Brazil, who had carried a large cross in the square. He did the same for some Polish youths — after hopping off his popemobile, that Plexiglas-enclosed bubble-on-wheels that became a staple of papal mobility after the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II in 1981.
Much has been made of this current pope’s seeming disdain for decadence — living in the guest house across the way from the official papal residence, wearing humbler vestments than his immediate predecessors and going to great pains to say the church shouldn’t marginalize people, even if their lifestyle choice goes against current doctrine.
In this upcoming weekend of anticipation for the faithful, we’d all do well to emulate the pope’s apparent selfless love for all humanity. That’s a message on which all faiths and denominations should agree.
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Danny Barrett Jr. is assistant managing editor and can be reached by email at danny.barrett@vicksburgpost.com or by phone at 601-636-4545.