In my religious tradition, Easter is about joy and light and hope.
Easter this year does not feel like that.
I was trying to get ready for Easter by viewing this series for Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Vigil. They were beautiful videos and being able to watch them alone was helpful. I spent decades involved with church music and/or liturgy planning, so I have many wonderful memories of those liturgies. They are very emotional for me. Even if we had been able to celebrate at our church, though, I probably would have chosen not to attend because I would have been at risk for crying through them. At this time last year, we were in the last few weeks of my mother’s life, so this is another in the long line of “first times” we have been dealing with over these last months. In some ways, it felt appropriate to be commemorating at this time alone.
Easter Day itself was complicated by some upsetting things that happened with family and friends beyond our household. It is difficult to want to help but not be able to do anything, or even to go to see them. Instead of Easter joy, there was a lot of sadness. pain, and uncertainty. One bright spot was watching Mass recorded at our diocesan cathedral. I decided to watch because our bishop is relatively new and I hadn’t heard him preach yet. I appreciated how pastoral he is: Pope Francis has been appointing bishops who have more pastoral experience rather than just those who have worked their way up through the bureaucracy. It was also nice to hear the cathedral’s pipe organ, two great soloists, and trumpet. I especially appreciated the soprano singing the Mozart “Alleluia” that daughter E had sung for her college auditions.
This Easter Monday has been spent trying to work through some of the complications that arose yesterday. In the back of my mind, I am also thinking of my parents, who were married on an April Easter Monday, though that year Easter Monday was not the thirteenth.
It was 66 years ago and the first time that they won’t be celebrating together.
Share this:
Top of JC's Mind 
This post really resonated with me. As we were watching the Easter service on the iPad, when it came to the collect that proclaimed our Easter joy and celebration, I realized how “make-do” I was feeling, proud of trying to make this work but absolutely not full of joy. It drove home how hard this all is. I’m sorry you had other, harder things to deal with as well. Perhaps during the 50 days of Easter some difficulty will subside.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I hope so, although I think that we will all be in such a different place that there may be permanent changes in how we worship and perceive community. I’ve heard a number of people say that we reclaimed some of the sense of the first Easter this year in our being shut away and dealing with fear and complexity and confusion. Perhaps we will be able to claim more of the sense of community that imbued the early church, when it was followers of The Way and not such a formal structure as it became after the first few centuries. We have become accustomed to, well, custom; we could use more of the Spirit’s fire and breath, more love, more community, more recognition of the Divine Presence in others and in creation.
LikeLiked by 1 person