When I was four or five years old, my career aspiration was to become a firefighter. I communicated this to my parents and little sister by zooming around the house in my imaginary firetruck, wearing a red plastic helmet, and imitating the sound of a siren, very loudly. After the first couple of days, this idea stopped being so cute; you can imagine how quickly this vocational choice dropped in popularity with my family. Sometime shortly after, I moved on from imagining life in the firehouse to wanting to be an astronaut. I learned to operate in space where, it turns out, there is no sound. (At the moment I can’t recall if this was my idea or if this new calling was my parents’ suggestion).
But the appeal of becoming a hero that rushes toward crises and saves others from disaster stayed with me a long time; in fact, I suppose that it has never completely disappeared. I learned to compartmentalize my emotions, make sense of the challenging situation, focus on the task at hand, intervene, and move on. While some of you might have learned to do the same when you were younger, I only learned years later that not everyone experiences crises or life the same way; in fact, there can be a danger to compartmentalizing feelings in a crisis management approach to life.
A few years ago, I was visiting Assisi with a group and had a deep and emotionally moving experience praying before the Cross of St. Damiano, the same Cross that inspired St. Francis into his conversion. As I was leaving the church, I was sharing my experience with one of the members of the group, an older, very wise woman from Argentina. Then, I very quickly transitioned from sharing something about my prayer to asking where we should all go for lunch (something that is never far from my mind). She stopped in her tracks, tugged on my elbow and said, “David, I’m sorry, but I can’t think about lunch. I’m still with the feeling of what you shared about your prayer. I need some time and some quiet before I can think about anything else.” And then she asked me, “Do you make space to feel your way from one experience to another, to allow yourself to really be present to the moment, or do you always move fast, as if from one thought or experience to the next?” I realized that my way was not everyone’s way.
Why do I share this as we enter into this Easter Triduum remembering the final days of Jesus’ earthly life and ministry?
Perhaps because we know the end of the story, we might have the tendency to move quickly through the events of the Passion, even going through the motions of our devotions and experiences of the liturgies of the Triduum, in order to arrive at the Vigil or the Easter Sunday services. We might sit through the Good Friday liturgy of the Adoration of the Cross and then, afterwards, breathe a sigh of relief that we can get on with things. We already anticipate the joy of the Resurrection despite how each step of the journey in fact feels so far from joy.
Or maybe we have reflected intellectually on the theology of the Passion and we have come to an understanding of how God worked for our salvation through these events, so that we can approach the Triduum with a kind of dispassion, an objective distance that allows us to make sense of it all as if with a kind of reason. But does it really make any sense? When we feel our way into this mystery of the Passion, where is the logic?
This morning, as our team was sharing our prayer on John’s account of the Last Supper, I was so struck by just how illogical and disorienting Jesus’ capacity is for love, “until the end.” Listening to my friends’ reflection, I found myself surprised, even shocked by his forgiveness of the disciples’ abandonment let alone the violence done to him. It seems absurd in fact, from our human perspective, that Jesus could tolerate such ignorance, unfaithfulness, and injustice.
Jesus’ Passion is of course connected to the suffering of all victims of injustice throughout time, and now. Considering the horrific level of violence and destruction happening at this very moment to innocent people around the world, how can we forgive the logic that gives rise to this aggression? How can we rationalize it let alone forgive it? I find myself deeply disturbed, confused, and disoriented by the rejection and violence that lead to his death and today, by the behaviors of world powers that opt for war despite the suffering they cause. To the extent that I am in any way complicit with these ways of the world, I am ashamed and heartbroken by this same humanity that Jesus so lovingly redeems.
If you, like me, feel this same, how can we move on from such feelings of confusion, brokenheartedness, and sorrow to the joy of the Resurrection in such a short span?
Just as the disciples, family, and extended followers of Jesus endured the pause of Holy Saturday, so we too need a span of time and space to feel our way through our sense of shock and grief at the state of the world today, our outrage at the gross abuses of power. While we could be tempted to compartmentalize, distract, or distance ourselves from it all, it’s only by allowing ourselves to feel our way through this that we will be sensible enough not to repeat the same patterns again and again. This sensitivity is not a weakness. Rather, this sensitivity, this capacity for deep feeling, empathy, and compassion, is very likely the quality through which God’s grace redeems us and which gives hope for the future.
It is paradoxically through our experience of feeling deeply the suffering of the world with a spirit of solidarity that we will also come to the empty tomb, just as Mary Magdalene did; Mary, who, even in her grief and despair, carried as well the hope beyond hope that Jesus’ words were true. It is there at the empty tomb, amidst the gardens and spring flowering trees, that this same, vulnerable sensitivity allows her to perceive God’s grace at work. God’s promise of faithfulness to his beloved is fulfilled there, on the other side of death. It was not a promise fulfilled so much through a heroic act of courage, as some would have us think, but as a result of vulnerability and surrender. This sensitivity, this is courage.
In fact, this is the kind of courage Jesus calls for from us: the courage to be vulnerable, the courage to revere life and to put down our arms, the courage to love our enemies. This is the path of forgiveness and reconciliation. This courage to be heartbroken by the world is also the sign of possibility for new life, resurrection, and the future God desires for us in his Kingdom.
This vulnerable, big hearted courage is the sign of Jesus “eastering” in us, as poet Gerard Manley Hopkins once wrote in his poem, the Wreck of the Deutschland. Christ easters in us when we allow his light to arise in us despite the darkness and sense of crisis around us. Christ easters in us when we give over our hearts to feel with him love for humanity, despite our unworthiness. This is the Easter joy we need, a humble, resilient, gift of new life for ourselves and our world today. May we find him, who is our true hope and joy, eastering in us these days of Triduum.
With prayers and best wishes for a peaceful and spiritually fruitful Easter,
