We’ve witnessed the stripping of the altars on Holy Thursday and felt the emptiness of the sanctuaries as the Blessed Sacrament was removed from tabernacles in perhaps the starkest moment of our liturgies.
It was, as it always is, a lonesome night. And then our spirits walked the Via Dolorosa in the stations on Good Friday. We watched the sad eyes of the Man of Sorrows meet His devastated mother, tears streaming from her face. We saw Him fall, utterly exhausted, three times and in agony from wounds already inflicted. He finally assumed His place upon the cross to conquer death and let loose our sins. And, in an oddly beautiful irony, we call it Good Friday. We go to our churches and line up to kiss His feet and adore Him. And that night the hours of our adoration are quiet and solemn as we address the gaping holes in our hearts.
The next day we wait with each Mary; we wait with His disciples; we wait with the world. And our waiting anticipates the joy of candidates and catechumens being received in a vigil, darkness consumed by light: a baptism, a first Communion, a confirmation…the warmth of Easter before the dawn even breaks forth.
And then comes the morn, the most brilliant day in the history of humankind. Our fast is over. Jesus Christ has risen from the dead. Our Savior has left His tomb behind. Many of us are much like Thomas – so Jesus invites us to His wounds and that invitation becomes the story of our lives, the personal invitation to commune with the risen Lord, to touch Him, to feel in some mysterious part of ourselves, where the nail went and where the lance landed.
That becomes the question of the season, doesn’t it? What do we do now? Do we not try our best to imitate Christ?
If so, let us rise, then. Let us rise from our deadly transgressions. Let us rise from our anger and our self-centeredness and our pettiness. Let us rise up from the quicksand of our pride, the right-handed pride that says I’m better than you and the left-handed pride that says I’m no good. If Jesus really did rise, then He continues among us and He is with us now, with me as I write of Him, and with you right now, in your thoughts, as you are reading this.
Easter Sunday is from here on out. Our earthly lives and immortality touch. The physical and the metaphysical mingle, just like they do each and every time we receive Christ in the Eucharist and each and every time we see Christ in another, especially in someone who is suffering.
And so we rise up from envy and estrangement and despair. Our humbled bones come to know the joy and gladness predicted by the psalmist. We rise by bringing the miracle of the Resurrection into our daily lives. We rise by emulating Christ’s love for those around us, for our loved ones, family, friends and strangers, especially those who’ve lost their way or who suffer the indignities of a harsh world. We love the best we know how with all the strength we can muster.
We carry Easter with us, out from the shadows of pain and doubt and into the light of hope.
We carry this Easter with us as we come to understand that every single thing we think and say and do has the potential to lift us up, to lift someone else up, to give some seemingly small daily glory to the One who left the stone of His tomb behind. To enter the world of a child, celebrating his or her spirit in our loving attention; to hold the hand of one grieving, present with them in a heart of sorrow; to keep from losing faith in a world where any kind of purity of intention seems anachronistic; to hold fast to the actual Presence of Jesus living through us every second of every day... these are the actions of Easter. This is how we rise up.
It doesn’t matter where we’ve been or for how long; He invites us back to Himself. Because in our hearts we love Him, we want to be present for those who hurt and seek His comfort. Because we have a need to connect with others, young and old, believers or not, happy or not, we rise up and go to it. And so each morning we take Easter with us out the door. And so each night we thank our Savior for this life – struggles and all – with the confidence that with His rising hope will remain with us. And so in the deepest parts of ourselves, we reach out to Him, to His mother, to the saints, to the sick and the poor, to those who need us and to those we need.
We find love there, so we find Jesus there. And so we rise.
Fred Gallagher is an author and editor-in-chief with Gastonia-based Good Will Publishers Inc.