Holy Week is a journey to the cross and beyond ... and every day is a different step. This week, I'll be offering a reflection for each step of the journey for us as a Cathedral community.
Yesterday was Good Friday.
Yesterday we saw the metal pierce through his body.
Yesterday we heard the mother’s cry and saw his friends scatter in fear.
Yesterday we heard his wailing cry as he breathed his last.
Yesterday our beloved was murdered by the state right in front of everyone even though they could find no crime against him.
Yesterday we heard him say “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” we heard the centurion finally, too late to save him, say “truly, this was the Son of God.”
Yesterday we laid him in the tomb and as night fell, we walked away.
Yesterday was Good Friday.
Today is the day after.
We all know the day after. The day after is when, for everyone else, life has returned to normal.
For everyone else.
For everyone else, it’s back to work, back to school, back to the way things were before.
Only for us, there’s a hole. A gaping, yawning chasm where the one we loved used to be.
We are offended by the sunrise because how could the sun dare to shine in a world where we will never again hear his laugh.
We are enraged by people’s pleasantries. How can they say “Have a nice day?” How can any day be nice again when we will never ever again see her smile?
Today is the day after.
Today is the day when everyone else tells us that’s what’s done is done, and we must just accept it.
Today is the day when everyone else tells us that we have cried enough, that we have grieved enough, that it is time for us to get on with our lives the way they were before.
Today is the day when everyone else tells us to sit down and be quiet and stop making such a fuss. That the healthy thing to do is let go … or at least distract ourselves until we can. After all, it’s over already.
Today is the day that people avoid us or stumble over words quickly and then excuse themselves from our presence because our pain makes them so uncomfortable, makes them feel so powerless.
Yesterday was Good Friday.
Today is the day after.
But we are not done.
We are not done because nobody can tell the grieving mother that she has shed enough tears. Exactly how many tears are enough when your child is full of holes lying cold on the ground?
We are not done because other people’s discomfort does not deprive us of the right to grieve. Because as Augustus Waters says in John Green’s The Fault In Our Stars, “That’s the thing about pain – it demands to be felt.”
When we suffer deep loss, we are not destined to spend the rest of our life in grief and pain … but we do need to spend some time there. And it needs to be OK. It needs to be OK not to be able to get through a dinner without crying or to not be able to get up in the morning or to spend a weekend on the couch looking through old pictures.
When we suffer deep loss, we are not supposed to end our lives with it, but we are supposed to be changed by it. Deep loss is supposed to make us angry and hurt – and it demands to be felt and to be expressed … and nobody can tell us what the right and wrong ways are to grieve and to rage when our beloved has been taken from us so unjustly.
Yesterday was Good Friday. Everyone cries on Good Friday.
Today is the day after. And however we are today is how we are.
And it is OK.
And nobody can tell us differently.
Yesterday was Good Friday.
Today is the day after.
And today is also the day before.
Easter is coming. We know it is. We know that there will be an Easter and that sun will dawn and the tears will be wiped away.
But that is for another day.
The day after is always the day before, too. But we cannot rush through it. We cannot run around it. We cannot set this day of grief on anyone else’s timetable but our own.
Yesterday was Good Friday.
Today is the day after.
Today is the day to feel the pain that demands to be felt.
Passionately.
Deeply.
Unapologetically.
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