At the core of our faith is the dual mystery of death and resurrection. We often remind each other that there can be no Easter Sunday without Good Friday. We encourage each other—that it is necessary to have Good Fridays, that we cannot have the joy and glory of Easter unless we have endured some kind of experience of the Cross. As we walked those weeks of Lent, we were preparing to accompany Jesus again through the darkness and sorrow of His final days. We meditated on all the stations from His Agony in the Garden to His Way of the Cross. And surely, we identified our own Sorrowful Mysteries as we prayed again with Him.
But this year I’m pondering the little struggles or losses that wouldn’t constitute a Good Friday, or an agony, but that make our journey challenging or burdensome. Could these unwished-for challenges, these inconvenient twists or troubles, also have an element of resurrection in them? Could it be that every daily struggle, every loss or disappointment, every unexpected hardship holds buried within it the grace of resurrection? It would be so like God to infuse the glorious mystery of rising to NEW life into the inglorious, unspectacular moments of daily demands and faithful living. Perhaps then each small sacrifice we encounter in our daily journey of life brings a small rise in our spirit, that each small trial we endure brings a greater radiance to our living? What if rising is an ongoing spiritual experience? And transformation-in-grace an unfolding event of our daily human life?
Maybe now there are many small Easters quietly occurring as you live your life faithfully, earnestly, sincerely. Alleluia! Alleluia!