Dark days of hope

We are enter­ing into the Tridu­um, the most sacred days in the Chris­t­ian cal­en­dar, and for me the most painful days of the year. 

I come into these East­er cel­e­bra­tions with a lot of bag­gage. I have dwelt on this long and hard; words on this top­ic have pre­vi­ous­ly appeared in these pages. I won’t pre­tend that any tremen­dous heal­ing has tak­en place in the four years since. Cer­tain­ly mar­riage and par­ent­hood have imposed sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence on my out­look and reac­tions to things. I have grown, and am still grow­ing. But the road to heal­ing, to whole­ness, is exceed­ing­ly long.

For the first time in sev­er­al years — per­haps for the first time ever — I have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to cel­e­brate the Tridu­um alone. Of course, no litur­gi­cal wor­ship can hap­pen alone; it is by def­i­n­i­tion the activ­i­ty of a wor­ship­ing com­mu­ni­ty. But I know well how to be alone in a crowd, and the wel­com­ing glow of com­mu­ni­ty has sel­dom warmed me. I hope in this holy and sacred sea­son that I can find the grace to turn a cor­ner, to fur­ther my rein­te­gra­tion into the lov­ing Peo­ple of God. 

This last is not a thing I take light­ly. My past has been all about the Church, and now I am con­fi­dent once again that my future is to be large­ly about the Church as well. But to do so I need to relearn how to be a Chris­t­ian. Not in the sense of faith, of being a believ­er, but in terms of rela­tion­ship, of feel­ing myself a part of a human com­mu­ni­ty. I don’t know where to begin, oth­er than to go and pray with oth­er Chris­tians, and to keep doing so. Ther­fore, with only my lone­ly heart, I go to cel­e­brate the sac­ri­fi­cial love of my God, and to dare to open myself to grace, to love, and to hope.