Easter

Hi to all who are preparing for Easter!

Yesterday, my husband and I took our ten year old son to a Stations of the Cross service, where children acted out the different steps to Jesus's sufferings the day He was crucified. Children played the parts of soldiers, apostles, both Marys, and Jesus. I was particularly struck by the boy who played Jesus - he brought such an air of dignity and understanding to Jesus as He suffered, and in the last scenes, true to scripture, had to go shirtless and "nailed" to a cross. For anyone who knows about ten year old boys, this is the year that they get very self-conscious about their bodies, and yet this young man offered up his own unclothed torso to the mass attendees. That, I thought, is understanding Easter - a young boy forgetting himself and offering it up to and for God. In love for what Jesus went through, this boy acted it out - literally every step. And through this boy, Jesus reached out to all of us - the tired, worried, overwhelmed mass of worshippers, and made us halt right there, and remember what the biggest sacrifice in the history of the world has been.

When the actors quietly came up the aisles, they must have been instructed to remain somber, because as we appreciative adults and children in the audience tried to smile at them as they passed, they remained straight-faced and did not seem to be aware that we were there. A teenager extinguished a candle on the alter, and turned and walked away. We were unsettled; no wishes for a happy Easter, no closing hymn. The LIGHT HAD LEFT THE WORLD. And we could feel it. Tears sat in several people's eyes, as we quietly had to make our way out together - and yet alone.

Sunday, the light will return to the world, with Jesus' glorious Resurrection, as He came to fulfill the scriptures and come back to us. All of us. I don't want to feel the way I did again in that church. Thank you, Jesus, for your return.

Today, I have several small jobs that I really hate - cleaning the bathrooms, going to the store for dribs and drabs, laundry. I am going to do them gladly and offer them up to God - or more to the point, try to offer up the spirit with which I do these jobs to God - in thanks. How lucky I am to be able to do them, and to have an eternal future, thanks to Jesus.

Happy, happy Easter. Laugh and sing; the Lord has returned to us all.

**Special thanks to St. Jospeh's Catholic Church in Wakefield, Ma., and to the cast of the Stations of the Cross production. ***