Holy Thursday, or Maundy Thursday, is in Christian tradition the day of Holy Week on which Jesus’ Last Supper with the disciples is remembered.  It immediately precedes Good Friday, which marks his crucifixion and death; followed by Holy Saturday, and then Easter Sunday, celebrating the Resurrection.  Maundy Thursday, as it does every year, also marks the last day of school before our Spring Break.

But why?  What has spring to do with the Christian celebration of Easter?  And why start our break on Good Friday, when the calendar says that spring started nearly a month ago?

Well, there are a number of reasons—but one is captured by C.S. Lewis, in his sermon The Grand Miracle:

“To be sure, it feels wintry enough still: but often in the very early spring it feels like that. Two thousand years are only a day or two by this scale. A man really ought to say, ‘The Resurrection happened two thousand years ago’ in the same spirit in which he says, ‘I saw a crocus yesterday.’ Because we know what is coming behind the crocus. The spring comes slowly down this way; but the great thing is that the corner has been turned. There is, of course, this difference, that in the natural spring the crocus cannot choose whether it will respond or not. We can. We have the power either of withstanding the spring, and sinking back into the cosmic winter, or of going on into those ‘high mid-summer pomps’ in which our leader, the Son of man, already dwells, and to which He is calling us. It remains with us to follow or not, to die in this winter, or to go on into that spring and that summer.”

Have a wonderful day.