Tree hugging this Easter season
by Bishop Joensen | April 24, 2025
During Lent, I’ve relied on a couple of reflection guides by various authors that are tied to the daily Mass readings. They’ve inspired my personal prayer and helped prime the pump for some homilies. But I admit that I was left with a sour taste in my mouth on Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Lent when one author, reflecting on Isaiah 49:13a, “Sing out, O heavens, and rejoice, earth, break forth into song, you mountains,” then encouraged us in the “Do” section that followed the reflection: “Every day: go for a walk, hug a tree, listen to birdsong, smell a flower, sing a song.”
Uggh. Now, most of those actions seem worthy to me and are consistent with a sort of contemplative, Franciscan-flavored spirituality, EXCEPT hugging a tree. Maybe it’s just my personal baggage growing up as a kid in the ‘60s and ‘70s, but tree-hugging resonates too much with a “groovy,” hippie-cultured, and maybe drug-induced mindset. Oh, I’ve got a cousin in Oregon who is a passionate environmentalist, and I respect his zeal and agree with him on many counts that we need to protect creation, but I can’t say that God figures prominently in the equation for him. He’s sort of a naturalistic John the Baptist, whose anger is quick to flare and then subside as he goes for a walk in the forest. In my mind, he’s the consummate tree-hugger.
As Lent yields to the sacred three days before Easter, there is one tree that stirs and silences us, before which priests are to take off their shoes in reverence and all of us are invited to humble ourselves and adore: the tree of Christ’s Cross. On Good Friday, one of the proposed antiphons we might chant exclaims, “We adore your Cross, O Lord, we praise and glorify your holy Resurrection, for behold, because of the wood of a tree joy has come to the whole world.”
Whether we touch, kiss, prostrate ourselves, or hug the Cross, we expose our hearts and acknowledge the Savior who does not cling to his own divine glory, but empties himself into our humanity. Jesus allows sin to suffocate him, his hands and limbs placed under restraints as the wood of the cross becomes a pallet of suffering bearing the load of the world’s callous and cruel indifference to the giver of all gifts, the one in whom all things are created.
To behold and embrace this Cross with the Savior who is lifted up before us is not for the faint of heart. We are convicted of our own personal sin that perpetrates such pain on another, but we are not to be paralyzed by shame. We are moved beyond self-reproach that could become a black hole of anger and contempt at self and even despair. Jesus looks to his Father for our sake to beg forgiveness and then fixes his tender gaze on all whose faith prompts them to remain present to him throughout his Passion.
And, if we are habitually, mystically inclined to linger before the Crucifix on a daily basis, it is not a stretch to sense that Jesus bends down to embrace us as he does St. Bernard in the tear-inducing image by Francesco Ribalta that hangs in the Prado Museum in Madrid.
But Jesus is crucified once and for all time; he is no longer in the tomb but is risen from the dead on Easter morning. In his rich reflection on Christ’s love that I’ve taken up before in this column, Pope Francis acknowledges, “We may also question how we can pray to the Lord of life, risen from the dead and reigning in glory, while at the same time comforting him in the midst of his sufferings.” He advises, “Here we need to realize this his risen heart preserves its wound as a constant memory, and that the working of grace makes possible an experience that is not restricted to a single moment of the past” (Dilexit nos, “He loved us,” n. 155). Grace-filled faith expressed by a heart who loves goes beyond our mind’s natural grasp.
Mysteriously, this is one of the few instances in life where we can have it both ways: suffering and joy mingle as space and time yield to the Paschal Mystery of Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection. Pope Francis: “The temporal distinctions that our minds employ appear incapable of embracing the fullness of this experience of faith, which is the basis both of our union with Christ in his suffering and of the strength, consolation and friendship that we enjoy with him in his risen life” (DN n. 156).
This year, Easter Tuesday, April 22, coincides with the 55th edition of Earth Day, whose theme is, “Our Power, Our Planet,” focused on enhancing reliance on renewable energy. The stated occasion for celebration: “We celebrate a transformative reality: we already possess the solutions needed to create clean, inexpensive, and unlimited energy for the entire planet through renewable solar, wind and other technologies.” Certainly, as Iowans, we sense the pervasiveness of wind-generated potential coursing across the prairie, as long as it is moderated and not violently unleashed in the manner of last year’s tornadoes that toppled even wind turbines.
Versus a naturalistic mindset where God is optional or even represents a noxious interloper, committed Christians endowed with the Spirit of the Risen Christ who transforms human persons and, indeed, the whole cosmos into a new creation, are not cranky or sullen but perpetually on the brink of Easter joy set free. Antiqua et Nova, “Old and New,” a note regarding Artificial Intelligence from the Vatican’s Dicasteries for the Doctrine of the Faith and for Culture and Education, I submit, effectively recasts Earth Day in a more comprehensive, Easter-bathed light.
The note maintains, “In a proper relationship with creation, humans, on the one hand, use their intelligence and skill to cooperate with God in guiding creation toward the purpose to which he has called it. On the other hand, creation itself, as Saint Bonaventure observes, helps the human mind to ‘ascend gradually, to the supreme Principle, who is God.’ ”
Human intelligence exceeds AI in the capacity of whole persons to engage reality in the “full scope of one’s being: spiritual, cognitive, embodied, and relational.” (AN nn, 25, 26).
The prospect of personally experiencing truth, goodness, unity and beauty transcends any binomial distribution calculator. This is preeminently the case in the event of Christ’s Resurrection which prophets and Jesus himself foretold but even when confronted with evidence, skeptical Pharisees, priests, and scribes dismissed. And this is sad, for to deny or ignore Easter is to reduce or even reject our hope of lasting joy. For the truth that Jesus lives, never more to die, is the access code interpreting all reality, drawing all of our experiences into the environment of God’s enduring, saving love.
“Intelligence is nothing with delight,” contends the French poet Paul Claudel (AN n. 28). To make the act of Easter faith in a Risen Lord who remains among us in the sacramentality of all creation, in Spirit-led persons, in the Church, is the highest act of which our intellects are capable. It is a prelude to the same delight familiar to the disciples who met Jesus alive after his death.
This is a mystery worth contemplating, but eventually we need to get up and do something—maybe even go for a walk, behold and smell the Spring flowers, or sing a song. Even better, offer a word or gesture of love to someone for whom suffering presently prevails over joy. For starters, today and every day of the Easter Season, I’m going to begin by embracing a tree—the tree of Christ’s Cross.
Happy Easter, alleluia, alleluia!