The altar was stripped, and we felt the stark but telling Absence. The next day, we symbolically walked the Via Dolorosa and the horror of the crucifixion settled in upon us. We kissed Our Lord’s feet (or bowed to them because of COVID-19 restrictions) as He hung upon the cross: the sacred agony that becomes a part of us. The following day we waited, the figurative waiting for Jesus to come back to us. In the wait, we were solemn and somber, we mourned, and we wept.
Then, fortunately for us, the sun rose and made the dawn a masterpiece and the Son rose, defining Christianity forever and engendering ultimate hope. We awoke and felt the weight lifted from us. The Triduum of the heart had been accomplished.
So, now what happens?
We go over it again and again.
The Psalmist tells us: “Make me to know joy and gladness, that the bones which thou hast humbled, may rejoice.” Some translations say the “broken” bones and yet others, the “crushed” bones. You get the picture. We envision the images of a suffering world. Some of us know the suffering on the cross intimately, and some know the dust, the mud and the grit at the foot of the cross.
I know a woman – one of the most charitable women I’ve ever met – who has lost her sight and much of her hearing in just the last few years. Her hair has fallen out and severe neuropathy pains her daily, coupled with tortuous headaches that strike on a regular basis. Medicines she must take to stave off infections from an autoimmune disease have contributed to strokes. Her husband, a dear friend, has become a full-time caregiver. Yet if you call her on the phone when she is up and going, she will defer questions about herself and ask you about your family. “Tell me all about the kids…how are they doing?” And she will empathize with anything you may be going through. She will even laugh with you, through it all, in the miracle of saintly surrender.
Easter Sunday has passed. What do we do now?
What do we do with the inevitability of death and the suffering of so many we love, as well as our own suffering? Where does it go?
What has the Triduum taught us? Can we assimilate the human tragedy we encounter and still embrace the joy of Our Lord’s rising?
Do the wounds and the fears and the doubts carry meaning? Who consecrates this journey we must travel when we meet sorrow at every way station?
If you are expecting simple answers to these questions, I cannot offer them.
I know only that I am more human when speaking with my friend and his wife, when I am trying to express my love in word or deed, and when I am praying the deepest prayers I have – chock full of dejection, anger, befuddlement, desire, longing for love and healing, and crying out for some kind of joy and gladness in these humbled bones.
I also take solace in the most powerful verse of scripture I know: “He wept.” I know Jesus loved Lazarus and cared deeply for the whole family. Scripture doesn’t say He felt “kind of sorry” for them or was properly sympathetic or thought it best to join the mourners. Scripture says “He wept.” He shed the tears of grief that many others would soon shed upon seeing Him on the cross, looking to heaven, crying out a loving response to a crucified thief at His side.
I don’t have answers.
Cardinal Newman said, “I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be necessary causes of some great end, which is quite beyond us. He does nothing in vain.”
If I serve Him, Easter is ever alive. If I serve Him, the everyday of Easter so richly informs His suffering on the cross and our suffering that is part and parcel of being human on earth.
French writer and Nobel Laureate Francois Mauriac once said, “God does not answer our desperate questionings; He simply gives us Himself.” My friend is finding a heart he didn’t know he had. His wife can feel the very texture of the wood beams that Christ died on.
And we are here together, marching each dawn into Easter, with our pain and our heartache, with our present sins and the sundry transgressions of the past, with our love for each other and for our God and with our hope, always and forever – our hope in the rising of the Son.
Fred Gallagher is an author and editor-in-chief with Gastonia-based Good Will Publishers Inc.