A girl holds a painted egg during celebrations after Easter Mass.
By Father Timothy Gollob
Special to The Texas Catholic
By now Lent and Holy Week and Easter Sunday have come and gone. But there are always remnants of what has happened in the past to remind us that maybe we didn’t sweep all the corners, maybe we didn’t fix all the leaks in our roof, maybe we missed some blessings.
The most vivid memory of this past several weeks is about an Easter Egg Hunt. Our confirmation youth decided that they wanted to sponsor an egg hunt for the smaller children in the faith formation classes.
After some discussion they agreed that just to have multi-colored eggs would be a symbol of the glory of the tomb from which our Savior rose on that first Easter.
They also decided to have a cross on the exterior of each egg to emphasize the fact that Jesus went to the tomb by way of the cross.
Saturday morning was a joyous time for those who hid the eggs and especially for those who found them.
Later that afternoon, I roamed around the “egging” grounds looking to see if anything escaped the sharp eyes of the kids.
Lo and behold, one egg was still nestled in its special hiding spot.
Maybe that is an example of God’s gifts to us. We think we might have discovered them all, but God always has some more good times and good things for each of us.
I thought back to Easter egg hunts of my early years in Tyler. It was always a joy to color the eggs in the bright dyes. My brother and I with some of the neighbor children hid and found and hid again and found again the eggs. As eggs got broken, we ate them with gusto (despite the fact that they were conspicuously off-white).
Many years later, Father Frank Becker and I were fishing at a ranch several weeks after Easter. The owners had hosted their grandchildren with an extensive Easter egg hunt. It must have stretched out over five acres since we found evidence of small baskets of eggs hanging in various trees and rocks.
Inside the eggs were coins and paper money!
Now that was an egg hunt worthy of symbolizing the blessings given us when Christ cracked open the tomb and gave us eternal life!
Father Timothy Gollob is the pastor of Holy Cross Catholic Church in Oak Cliff.
