; Children's Corner •

HAPPY Easterto everyone! " In many ways, I really prefer Easter to Christmas; perhaps some of you agree. First of all, the weather is usually better; summer is just around the corner, and the gardens are beginning to fill with flowers. Secondly, it's rather like coming out of a long train tunnel into the bright sunlight.
In the right mood MANY times in this column we have talked about how the Church, through her liturgy and prayers, tells us how we ought to feel at certain times of the year. and Easter is one of these. During Passiontide the churches are gloomy with statues and crucifixes clothed in purple. Even the bells are silent towards the end. The Easter Vigil starts with a darkened church that gradually lights up to symbolise the resurrection of Christ.
I think the apostles must have felt just like that. First of all the gloom and disappointment of their Master's death, followed by a ray of hope as the reports of those who had seen Jesus began to come in. Finally the full realisation that what He had promised had actually happened. and all was well again. It sounds like the most wonderful fairy tale, and yet it's true !
When a king prayed (INCE upon a time there was a
boy who climbed trees, just in the way we were talking about a fortnight ago. However, he hadn't read Children's Corner, and because he didn't remember the "three point grip" he fell to the ground, dead. He had a friend who was the Abbess of a monastery, and she was so fond of him that she asked the king, who was a very holy man, to say prayers for him.
The king did so, and, sure enough, the boy stirred, and, by next morning. he was running around again, fit and well.
Perhaps that sounds like another fairy story, but Unity Kirke, who wrote me a letter about it, assures me that it really happened. The king was Henry VIth of England, and she says that if only we could get him canonised as a saint (and he performed many other miracles) he could be the patron of all tree climbers !
About canonising pERHAPS it sounds rather odd P to suggest that it's up to us to get people canonised. But it isn't when you remember that we, all of us, are the Church—not just the priests and bishops. Of course it's the Pope who decides, but he listens to two things : First of all the Holy Ghost. Secondly, the mind of the Church.
So when we want to have someone canonised—like the parents of St. Therese of Lisieux—we can do a great deal by praying that the Holy Ghost will make His will known, and then by bombarding the Pope with letters.