On Traffic Lights and Easter

From an address to the Conference of Catholic Women at Ascension Church, Boca Raton, FL on March 19, 2024

I was reading an article the other day about why we need to add a fourth light, a white one, to traffic signals. (It has something to do with automatic cars, but that’s not my point here.)

The author, writing in a secular press, described the traffic light in plain terms: three lights, three colors, red, yellow, green, but one light – three in one, just as is the Holy Trinity.

I will admit, it threw me off a bit. Who would ever use something so prosaic as a traffic light to describe as magnificent a mystery as the Holy Trinity?

Then I realized – well, everybody. Is there any difference between using a shamrock and using a traffic light? St. Patrick used a symbol at hand, something seen every day by his audience, to describe something not so easily explainable, to make it possible to be understood by his listeners.

Today, most of us encounter shamrocks in art (and even then, often the “shamrock” is a four leaf clover, not a three leaf one). But the ubiquitous three color traffic light is something we see every day, multiple times a day. Consider how many traffic lights you passed on the way here. What if, each time you passed a traffic light, you took a moment to consciously turn you mind to the Trinity? What if you took it a step further, and assigned in your own mind a color to represent each member of the Trinity? Then the red of the light may lead you to say a prayer to the Holy Spirit – and the red of a rose may later make the same connection.

We are called to prayer, and to pray without ceasing. If we use the everyday sights to draw us to prayer, we may develop into people of prayer; people for whom praying and breathing are interchangeable.

Have a blessed Holy Week. Celebrate the Last Supper and the institution of the Eucharist on Holy Thursday. Suffer with the Lord through His Passion and Death on Good Friday. Celebrate the Resurrection on Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday.

We are a Resurrection people. Pentecost is the birthday of the Church, but it is Easter that celebrates Christ’s victory over death. So rejoice and be glad, saying the words of the prayer called in Latin the Regina Caeli, or Queen of Heaven:

O Queen of heaven, rejoice, Alleluia;

For He whom thou didst bear, Alleluia;

Is risen as He said, Alleluia.

Celebrate Easter this year by recognizing it, greeting one another as done in the Greek Orthodox churches with the words “Christ is Risen!” and responding with “He is risen indeed.”