Day by day

Tuesday in the Octave of Easter, April 11, 2023

(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)

Day by day

My soul waits for the Lord who is my help and my shield. May your kindness, O Lord, be upon us who have put our hope in you.

It was Easter morning, and the sun did not shine. I woke up in more than doldrums, but foreboding. Before my shower I listened to Pray As You Go – music and thoughtful questions about the day’s scripture. The readers these days are Irish, and their voices lift and lilt and often cover me in joy.

Matthew 28:1-10

The women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy. Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They clasped his feet and worshiped him. Jesus said, “Do not be afraid.”

The Irish Jesuit pointed out that the whole earth shook with “the wonder and glory of Jesus rising from the dead. It provokes terror in the soldiers and fearful awe in the women, but also great joy.” So far, so good. Then she asked me about me:

“What are your feelings as you contemplate the risen Lord?” Her question hit me like a lightning bolt.

Feelings? I realized I was caught up in some kind of darkness. I could get excited about a movie on TCM, or a well-turned phrase in my devotions, or good food, or a magnificent sermon by Matt at Grace, our church. And I realized how unnoticed Jesus was in all of this rest-of-my-world.

My Irish friend caught me off-guard, and I was never so grateful.

How about herself? She quoted Gerard Manley Hopkins, “I greet him the days  I meet him, and bless when I understand.” How do you meet Jesus in your life, she said, and what do you understand from these encounters?

I was being drawn out of my funk. I remembered Ron Rolheiser, writing about the dark night of the soul.

While that darkness can be confusing, it can also be maturing: It can help move us from being arrogant, judgmental, religious neophytes to being humble, empathic men and women, living inside a cloud of unknowing, understanding more by not understanding than by understanding, helpfully lost in a darkness we cannot manipulate or control, so as to finally be pushed into genuine faith, hope, and charity.

And in the rising tide of my encounter with Jesus on Easter morning, I read the words on Monday of two of my online poet friends, Clarence and Steve. Seems like we all are crushed in our iniquities, then rescued by Jesus pierced for our transgressions. By his wounds we are healed.

First Clarence Heller:

Potential

Rainy, weepy, cloudy, sleepy.

Perhaps I could rouse some energy

but to what point,

to what point?

 

This day’s potential deflated in early morning hours

upon waking unnatural, unnecessary.

Flat the day moves like a tortoise.

Today I sit on the sidelines of the race.

 

Wasted it feels, what may have been “but for.”

So here, so now, the only potential

is to hope for a better tomorrow,

and to love what is in gentle kindness.

And then also on Monday, Pastor Steve’s long perspective:

The horror behind us has not vanished.
The stain on the wall hasn’t faded.
Your eyes are still red from weeping
at his sorrow, bearing yours.
How could you forget the burn of the nails
as he was hammered to your own heart,
and suffered for your selfishness?
Without doubt you felt the world collapse
as he breathed his last, the whole city shaken,
dust to dust, not one stone left upon another.
Surely you remember the travesty of his lifeless flesh,
the theft of your time with him.
Clearly, you saw the stone rolled onto the grave,
the granite weight of death so immovable.
This you know: that sin and sorrow killed him,
that the army that led him to his death
was quartered in your heart.

And yet he is alive. What do we make of this?
That there is a mercy more powerful than all that.
That all of this, the sin and sorrow, the guilt,
the stone hardness of death itself,
is no longer what it was.
What seemed absolute has become a mist,
changed by mystery, diluted with light,
confined by the certainty that despite all horror,
our graves, overpowered by love,
open like wings, and let go,
and we begin anew.

Now we know.

 I have no way to know how I’ll wake up tomorrow. I am unsure of my commitment to “meeting Jesus in my life,” in spite of my strong desire to do so. But I know I am not alone. And I feel less afraid of death, and also of what life might be dishing up for me next.

You will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is made to you and to your children and to all those far off, whomever the Lord our God will call.

(Acts 2, Psalm 33, 118, John 20)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)

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