Category: the sacramental life

Easter Monday

Not Over Yet

A quiet melancholy usually settles over me on Easter Monday. And I blame the Church; She is brilliant in her liturgical theatrics: She sweeps us into the solemnity of the Last Supper on Holy Thursday, descends with us into the sorrow and profundity of Christ’s Passion and Death, then suspends us over Holy Saturday, until sundown. But that sense of suspension doesn’t completely vanish at dawn on Easter. There is a sense of relief, yes, but it is coupled with anticipation.

The same melancholy settles after Christmas day: the anticipation of Christ’s advent isn’t fully satisfied. And the readings of Advent prepare the Church for that reality. Though Christ came to earth incarnate, He will come again. We repeat this promise at each Mass: As we await the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

It’s not just melancholy; there’s joy, too. But it’s a quiet joy, a joy of awe and wonder, a joy of things to come. It’s Mary Magdalen at the tomb, desperate to touch the risen Christ, but restrained, and instructed to, “Go!” Go, tell the disciples; go, share the Good News; go, make disciples of all nations. Celebrating Easter is a reminder that someday we will rest with Christ; we will touch Him, unhindered. The Triduum liturgies create that hunger for Christ’s triumph, for eternal rest and eternal communion.

Holy Saturday

Hands to Work, Hearts to God

There’s always an eery stillness to Holy Saturday, that day between Christ’s death and resurrection. It reminds me of the shock of grief after someone dies, when you’re aware that someone is suddenly absent, but it’s too new and fresh to be fully real. Their absence follows you like a shadow and time becomes theoretical instead of actual. Tasks of daily life become the track beneath your feet, carrying you from one task to the next, sometimes mindlessly.

On Holy Saturday there’s so much preparation that goes into an Easter celebration and feast that I have to make myself a list of what to do, otherwise I find myself feeling listless and unaware of time, like a pseudo-grief. This Holy Saturday, I find myself thinking of the myrrh-bearers, the women who, in their shock and grief, gathered oils and ointments to bring to the tomb. It must have been strangely comforting to clean his wounds and wrap his body in fragrant linen.

Just this past year, a dear friend of mine passed away quite suddenly. It was traumatic for her husband and children, and though they were with her in those last moments, there wasn’t much of a goodbye, not much opportunity for closure. The days that followed were beautiful: they prepared a pine coffin by writing notes along the inside and lined it with fabric and herbs. They prepared her body themselves and laid her to rest. They wept as they knelt in the dirt and planted flowers to adorn the final place of their mother’s body. They comforted her with song, drank in her death with their senses, then mourned with their tears and sweat.

As I learn more about trauma, I am more and more amazed at how God made us, how our body, mind, and spirit are intimately connected and affect one another, both for good and for ill. With strong emotions, especially grief and terror—which the disciples and women assuredly felt astutely on Holy Saturday—putting our hands to work and hearts to God is a way to actively pray and process.

In some small way, preparing food and filling Easter baskets so my family can enter into the joy and rest of Easter Sunday is prayerful and contemplative. There have been and will be greater moments when acts of service are less delightful and more important. The adult children of my friend who passed away had also, countless times before, completed acts of service with their mother in both joyful and difficult times. In the discipline of putting their hands to work and hearts to God, they were able to do what needed to be done with devotion and love when tragedy shocked them. Just so, the women who rose up and put their grieving hands to work in their darkest moment had done it thousands of times before in little ways when there was less at stake, and so were prepared to do something as difficult and powerful as prepare God for the grave.

Good Friday

by His wounds

I didn’t pick a word of the year for 2023. I can’t really call it a tradition yet, just something I did two years in a row at the behest of a friend. And while I scoffed at the idea originally, it was meaningful in the end. So I really did try to think of one for this year, but nothing stuck. Yet as Lent draws to a close, I think I’ve found it, the word of the year: wounds.

One of the reasons I was opposed to the idea of a word-of-the-year is that it seemed like a goal-setting mechanism, and that’s really not my style. Goals are anxiety-inducing, just threats of failure looming in the distance. I tend to do better with a day-by-day go of things, so I can go to sleep taking note of little victories and examining little failures. But the word-of-the-year is more like a sacramental, a mode through which Christ speaks to me. The year my seventh baby was born, the word was healing, and that year would reveal a path of healing I couldn’t have anticipated. The next year it was receptivity, and soon I was listening to the heartbreaks of my children, which set us on a road of discernment to relocating, something I couldn’t have imagined. And this year wounds have been the mode through which I’m learning to know myself, and this Lent, a mode through which Christ is revealing Himself.

Listening to Him through wounds has been very challenging. For a while, all I could hear was self-loathing, neglect, and despair. It cast a shadow over everything in my life. At times I thought I could retreat again, push it all back into the shadows and manage like I have for the past many years, but once a leviathan like that has been unleashed, it’s out. It will have its reckoning. All I could do was surrender to the time it would take to process and heal. In the meantime, facing the ugly and walking around with open wounds has been exhausting.

My reckoning with God has taken time, but has left me with significant moments of revelation. It was during the 33 days of consecration to Jesus through Mary that I first realized how distorted my view of Father-God was. It was at the confession-of-my-life where the priest opened that pandora’s box for good and allowed me room to express anger at God. He explained suffering to me in a way that I could understand, and inserted Christ as a light of hope into my darker memories. On my way to daily Mass a year ago, I suddenly was given an image of the Trinity with the words, “Everything I [Christ] am, God is. He has given me everything”. And just in the short time I’ve been in counseling, I feel like I’ve been able to organize feelings into right places, redirecting the anger I had towards God.

What has become increasingly clear over Lent is how well God knows me. That probably sounds silly– of course He does as my Creator. But I think there’s always been a self-protective front between myself and Him. There were parts I hid from Him, not completely on purpose. But He always knew what was there in the deep and waited for the right moment in my life to face those dark depths with me. And He hasn’t left my side.

At times Mass has been difficult, sometimes impossible to sit through. But a source of strength is the wounded, crucified, naked Christ on the cross lifted up for all to see. He leads the way in vulnerability, exposure, and suffering. This is what turned the heart of the thief on the cross. The thief shows us how to approach Good Friday: “He sees a Cross and adores a Throne; he sees a condemned Man, and invokes a King”*. Sometimes we want to turn this around and believe that Christ’s divinity made suffering beautiful, and Christ’s salvific work made the cross easy and light. But suffering is still terrible, the cross is still the way of death. But we’re no longer alone; our pain is seen and experienced by the Creator of the cosmos. We are on a cross beside Him, tempted to curse the day we were born, but strengthened by His fortitude in suffering and the look of love in His eyes as He suffers alongside us.

If I can know myself better through my wounds, and I can know Christ better through His wounds, then I have to believe that the only way to understand others better is through their wounds. It’s hard to watch others suffer, and I think sometimes out of our discomfort we try to fix it, fill the void with platitudes, and sometimes pretend it doesn’t exist. But here lies one of the beautiful mysteries about not just Good Friday, but Christ’s entire mission on earth: he dresses the wounds of others—both physical and spiritual—and is wounded Himself for all to see. There is no hurt unknown to Him, no wound too terrible to mend, no cry of the heart that escapes Him. It’s not simple, nor is it easy. It’s tiring and exhausting, requires a heroic amount of courage and patience. But He is all of that on the cross for us, showing us the way, ever before us.

*From The Seven Last Words, Fulton J. Sheen

Palm Sunday; a.k.a., sweaty-palms Sunday

Well, we did it. We parents survived a mammoth Lenten sacrifice: the Palm Sunday liturgy. Which, in the eyes of children, is tiresomely long and full of disappointment as they are told continuously that no, the palm branches are not for sword fighting your brother or tickling the person in front of us. And let’s face it, twisting a palm branch into a cross is one of the great Catholic mysteries.

It has gotten much easier over the years. Most of my children aren’t children anymore, and this year our toddler fell asleep during the penitential rite and didn’t wake up until communion, praise be Jesus. But hearing the musical cries and screams of children throughout the sanctuary reminded me of those sweaty Triduum liturgies when you have to trust that grace is real and somehow the prayers are passing through your ear canals and sticking somewhere in your consciousness.

If I could go back and give the younger-mom-me advice about wrangling children in Mass, I would say, “Girl, chill the eff out.” At the time, I thought I was teaching my children manners by insisting they sit still, kneel and stand when appropriate, remain mostly quiet. But looking back, I think it was 10% an attempt at parenting, but 90% a worry about being judged by others. It took several years to relax. Gradually, my husband and I both got used to spending time in the foyer or on the steps of the church, sometimes for most of the Mass. And even more gradually than that, we got used to not being angry the whole time we were in the foyer or on the steps of the church. We tried a rewards system, bribing, lecturing—and none of it worked. If anything, it made our kids loathe Mass. Eventually, we concluded that we would rather our kids wiggle and squirm, and come away with a give-or-take opinion about Mass, than hate it because they were constantly in trouble for just being a child.

Things settle. They figure out how to sit through Mass. And the younger ones learn from the older ones.

It was beautiful to hear the musical cries and screams of children in Mass today. I just kept thinking, “I feel ya kiddo. This is a long and strenuous Gospel to sit through.” It was also a rare year where I could close my eyes and—imagine this—pray and meditate along with the Passion. I’ve learned to treasure and appreciate those Masses, as they are few and far between.

As my children keep growing older (they do that), I am realizing that Mass will become contemplative for me once again. That time is coming. And while I’m looking forward to that, a part of me will mourn those crazy, sweaty Triduum liturgies with over-tired, hungry, half-crazed toddlers. I promise now, that when that day comes, I will look at a pair of young, frustrated parents and smile. I might even envy them. A little bit.

here, you have a tissue…

… and I’ll just be over here having an epiphany during Mass

One of the purposes of penitential seasons is to simplify, gain clarity, grow closer to Christ. And here is my confession, borne from clarity, that materialized this past Advent season: I am having a crisis of identity. Not my own identity, but of God’s identity. And maybe struggling to see God clearly would naturally muddle my own identity, or vice versa, since I was created in His image. There’s a thought.

January 1 of this past year, 2022, opened with a surgical Confession, the kind that cuts open the chest, takes your heart out, flips it over, sews it back in the right way and you come out a different person. But I didn’t walk out of the church waltzing with Christ into a sunset. I left struck dumb, paralyzed yet free, wondering what was next.

There was a whole lot of “next”.

While in the confessional, the priest had me speak to Christ (like at him, towards the monstrance, inches away from my face) and tell him how my heart had been broken. I said things I didn’t even know were inside of me. It was like I was watching myself, gaping, she just said WHAT? You don’t tell God you’re angry at Him. At yourself, sure, because you deserve every tear you shed. But to cry at God, to ask Him why He wasn’t there, didn’t stop things, etc., was… life-changing, yes… but so f-ing terrifying. The priest, in persona Christi, gently listened, offered wisdom, and assured me how much God loved me.

A few years ago, during the consecration to Jesus through Mary, was the first time I realized that I had a messed-up image of God. I had distinctly separated out the persons of the Trinity in my head, and I didn’t really like talking to God. Jesus, yes. Holy Spirit, yes. But Father-God was terrifying. This awareness had been present, but dormant in my mind until that confession when the damn was broken. I was swimming in it now, the full consciousness of my distorted perception of Father-God.

But what to do with that?

The rest of the year is a longer story, but fast-forward to this past Advent of 2022. I was sleep-walking through it in many ways, but maybe that was a grace: I think I was able to receive what God wanted me to hear.

It was Gaudete Sunday, when you can expect the readings to be hopeful and comforting certainly, but I wasn’t expecting it, wasn’t paying as much attention this year. The church was packed, and our family of nine was sandwiched in a pew between a smaller family of four, and a young woman. We were only a few minutes into Mass when I realized the young woman beside me was weeping. I felt an overwhelming, maternal/sisterly love for this stranger and I wanted to give her comfort. We heard the words of the prophet Isaiah:

The desert and the parched land will exult;
the steppe will rejoice and bloom.
They will bloom with abundant flowers,
and rejoice with joyful song.

Such hope for this suffering young woman! I wanted to proclaim to her, with Isaiah:

Strengthen the hands that are feeble,
make firm the knees that are weak,
say to those whose hearts are frightened:
Be strong, fear not!
Here is your God…
he comes to save you.

The readings continued, and into the Gospel we went where Jesus tells John’s disciples to report to him in prison about what is actually happening: the blind see, the lame walk, the dead are raised. Yes, yes, yes, Christ offers not just promises, but actual healing! I was singing this with my heart as I offered her the only comfort appropriate in the middle of Mass towards a weeping stranger– a tissue.

But this sobering thought hit me soon after: with what enthusiasm I wanted to offer Christ’s tender mercy, comfort, and miraculous healing through the passing of a tissue to a complete stranger, someone I was certain God loved. Why couldn’t I believe that for myself? I believed that God was a healer, a good Father– that’s what I’ve been taught in my twenty years as a Catholic, that’s what I’ve read, that’s what I’ve told others.

My mind wandered back to Isaiah 35:

Those whom the LORD has ransomed will return
and enter Zion singing,
crowned with everlasting joy;
they will meet with joy and gladness,
sorrow and mourning will flee.

Those whom the Lord has ransomed. That’s me.

{Allow me this brief tangent that will connect, I promise: in marriage, you say your vows, you say “I love you” and you mean it. But then something happens, difficulties arise, you quarrel or whatever, and you say “I love you” but it means something even deeper than before in a way you couldn’t have foreseen the first time you said it. And this keeps happening, again and again, until you realize you love your spouse more deeply than ever before, even though you loved them as much as you were able fifteen years before.}

That’s the best way I can think to describe what’s happening to me, only in media res, stuck in the hard part. I said, “I believe, amen”. And I really did believe in God and salvation and Divine Love. But when the damn broke in that confession, all the mucky soil from underneath rose to the top and now I’m swimming in refuse and it’s harder to imagine that I will “bloom with abundant flowers and rejoice with joyful song”. I believe, but it’s a tired “amen”.

This weeping stranger in Mass was a reminder of myself. Offering her one tissue just made her weep more. I persuaded her to take the whole pack. A small gesture of tenderness broke her a little more open. And just as I had wanted to draw her close, comfort her, assure her of God’s love for her, so I must remember that God feels that way towards me. Even when I come to Mass or present myself to Him in prayer weeping, parched, enraged, weary, He wants it all. He takes it all.

the God of Grit

O great mystery,

and wonderful sacrament,

that animals should see the Lord born,

lying in a crib;

The medieval hymn, O Magnum Mysterium, expresses awe at the humility of Christ’s birth. That the birth of the King of Kings should be first witnessed to by beasts of burden, and that the spouse of the Holy Spirit lies on hard ground amidst scratchy hay to labor– this is a magnum mysterium, a great mystery.

During different stages of my life, I have pondered different aspects of Christ’s birth during the Advent and Christmas seasons. As a young adult, the wonder and majesty struck me; as a young mother, the discomfort and peril struck me; at other times, the historical and cultural circumstances have struck me. But this Christmas, it has been poignantly sensory. I am there experiencing the stench of animal urine and dung, the smell and scratch of hay, the frigid night air, the veil of darkness, the base life-sounds of bleating and newborn cries.

This past year I have tried to be honest and receptive in my relationship with God, which has revealed a lot of repressed anger and hurt towards God. I had to work through the shame of feeling angry before I could actually confront the origins of this anger. Interiorly, I wearied, stopped wrestling the darkness, and I’m now just sitting with it. While that’s necessary, it’s dark and cold here at times. But I know this is part of deliverance and healing.

It’s been liberating to stop forcing emotions, like pulling cellophane over a bucket of muck. Right now, Mass is an act of obedience; Communion is a still, quiet moment at the cross. But this is an improvement from running out of Church during the consecration, which is where I was a year ago. Part of that healing has been peeling away the angelic, gilded depictions of Christ and the Church, and discovering the grit. Only then do I see myself and the life God has walked with me through. Only then do I remember that God indeed has been Emmanuel, God with me– not just in consolation and revelation, but He has been faithful in all things, all places, even under the cold veil of night. I don’t know if I believe that yet, but at least I can imagine that I will get there.

What does it mean that God chose to be born in a dank, stench-filled cave, surrounded by dumb animals? If Mary was the beloved of His heart, why would he allow her to give birth in cold, pungent darkness? Magnum Mysterium opens with, “O great mystery”. This, like so much of Christ’s life, is a mystery which theologians debate and mystics contemplate. But what we can know with the same senses that Christ incarnated, is that His birth, while miraculous and mysterious, was also one of stench and grit.

This simple reality makes me feel loved. As John of the Cross wrote, “this delight within your Bride / Would great be increased, / If the flesh she is endowed with / She saw you also shared”. The stench and grit that I am working through is there with baby Jesus and the Holy Family. I will sit with them in the dark, chilly cave, in the great mystery, and trust that salvation is here.

O Blessed Virgin, whose womb

was deemed worthy to bear

the Lord Jesus Christ.

Alleluia!

Gaude, Gaude; Pivot, Pivot

Usually, St. Nicholas’s feast day is a big deal in our home. Usually, we open stockings before breakfast. Usually, these stockings have the traditional chocolate coins, clementines, maybe a small gift or two, and a striped candy cane. Usually, we feast on a supper of Greek roast, mashed potatoes, and broiled vegetables. Usually, we enjoy delicious gingerbread for dessert. Usually, we read The Miracle of St. Nicholas, and I do the voices. Usually, it’s magical.

But this year was different.

This year, for the first time, I have three teenagers in away-school, as opposed to home-school. Sure, they come home every night, but they’re tired and people-saturated, and after a quick debriefing, they retreat and complete homework. They’re also in band and theater and board game club and sports and they have a peer group that appropriately takes up a lot of their social energy. AND they have to GO TO SCHOOL on the feast of St. Nicholas.

With younger children still at home– and it’s already been hard for them to adjust to a quieter house with their siblings away– I refused to let these Advent feasts pass by. We had a family meeting, we rearranged expectations, we set the date for our St. Nicholas celebration this weekend. I shall not be moved! Family feasting shall prevail!

But… (sigh)

I forgot that three of my children were going to birthday parties, and one had closing night of the high school play which was followed by a cast party, and inevitably, we ate Greek roast and gingerbread in shifts. Lame.

But… (sigh)

I asked for this. My teenagers were depressed a year ago, desperately wanting more of a community, hungry for peer affirmation, bored with home-schooling. And around this time last year, I started pleading with God to do something: make me ready to do whatever I need to do to help them through these difficult years, open my ears, move mountains, part waters, heal their wounded hearts.

Remember that scene in Friends when they’re moving the new couch up a flight of narrow stairs and Ross keeps shouting, “PIVOT! PIVOT!” That is the secret sauce to parenting that no one ever tells you. You never arrive. You never do it perfectly. People change, times change, communities change, and so we PIVOT-PIVOT. And sometimes that damn couch is never going to get through the narrow stairway. I think in this new age of parenting I’m going to have to let go of a lot of traditions or expectations I hold onto which I love in exchange for something that looks different but might just be better.

It happens to be Gaudete weekend, the third weekend of Advent, the rose candle, the we’re-almost-there-so-rejoice Sunday. This St. Nicholas feast wasn’t quite what I wanted it to be, but damn, I’m so happy. My kids are busy! Dudes, they are going to birthday parties! In an alternate version of my life, I could have easily resented today with all its driving around and having all of us in different places, but my kids are feasting socially with wonderful peers. They are becoming more confident in who they are through performance and music and sports and peer affirmation. I am rejoicing.

Word of the Year

{aaaahhhhhhhh!!!}

In January of last year—2021—my lady-friends at church and I got together for a friend’s birthday. The birthday girl requested we come to the gathering with “a word”. A word-of-the-year: apparently, it’s a thing. I immediately went to sarcasm and thought of every children’s television show with their words of the day: would Word Girl greet me mentally every morning, her cape flowing behind her, with a reminder of my word-of-the-year? It was hard not to imagine Pee-Wee Herman screaming in hysterics with giant underwear on his head every time this word-of-the-year would be uttered. That’s where my brain goes, what can I say. 

aaahhhhhhhh!!!

But the pop-up image of Pee-Wee Herman wearing giant underwear on his head wasn’t the only turn-off to this exercise. I admittedly have a knee-jerk repulsion to female groupings of any kinds—prayer groups, Bible studies, book clubs—which is objectively unjust and something I’m in the process of examining and hopefully rectifying. That being said, my first reaction to my friend’s request was panic and repulsion. But I simmered-the-hell-down and realized the more appropriate and reasonable response between avoiding the get-together and making up a saccharine and dishonest response, was to politely decline word-choosing and be a good listener. 

This lady-friend group continually challenges my repulsion towards lady-groups with their sincerity and generosity of spirit. And this was no exception: as I sat and listened to their honest, and non-saccharine responses, my heart softened. I understood more the purpose of the exercise, and in that moment of emotional receptivity, a word floated into my head: healing. 

I was pregnant, due that May, and I had approached and begun this pregnancy with the intention of learning to trust God more fully. There were a lot of knowns and unknowns to fear with this pregnancy. I had been praying for complete and total healing, but also that God would help me trust Him more, whatever the outcome. St. Gianna Molla’s mantra of whatever God wants was purposely on my lips, even though there was fear in my heart.  

I swallowed my pride and suspicion and told my friend later that week what my word-of-the-year was. She was a physician, a mother of four, and a recent convert to Catholicism. She explained that she wanted to know her friends’ words so she would know how to pray for each of us. And later that year, she would—unbeknownst to me—begin a novena to St. Gianna Molla towards the end of my pregnancy when things got scary. It would be Gianna’s feast day when I was finally released from the hospital. Only then did my friend let me know about her novena, and it had been the first time she had ever entrusted a prayer to the intercession of a saint.

It is experiences like these when I feel God lighting a loving flame to melt one more hardened, sarcastic piece of my soul. My friend requested vulnerability, which I systemically responded to with suspicion. But through the vulnerability of my friends, my own heart was softened so that I could hear the Holy Spirit whisper, “Healing.” That year—2021—really was a year of healing, but in more ways than I could have anticipated. God needed to prepare me, needed me to have my eyes wide open and my heart attentive. Even though the prayer for healing was already on my lips, I needed to entrust that to the body of Christ, these lady-friends with open hearts. 

the art of friendship in a virtual world

Now let me be totally honest and admit that I’ve never been awesome at friendship. I think there’s some understandable reasons for that, but some bad reasons too for which I’m admittedly culpable and through which I’m working. That having been said, even I know that the new social rules and habits that quickly normalized with the coronavirus pandemic suck. They suck real bad.  

I live in Oregon, one of the few states that is still mandating mask-wearing. I’m not interested in starting a mask-wearing debate, whatever-I’m-over-it, and it’s common sense that if I sneeze into my mask instead of your face, there is less of a chance I’ll share my germs. Social distancing is also sensible for limiting germ-sharing. I don’t really think these habits are debatable on the grounds of effectiveness. However, are they worth the mental and emotional costs from which our society is clearly suffering? To that, I would have to say no.  

I try not to watch the news—I more often listen. But from what I have heard, there’s been much less said about the increase in signs of mental illness in our general population, most disturbingly among teens, than the hospitalized and death count. I’m not a nay-sayer; I know Covid is killing people, and it’s tragic. But I think down the line we’ll suffer further consequences of the social cinching we’ve been pulling through society. I see the effects of it now, the way people are scared to interact: I’ve seen social interactions begin with suspicion and end in aggression; I’ve witnessed social interactions begin shyly, with an awkward thrust of a hand in an offered handshake or halted hug, then end with joyful relief as a real conversation ensues. When I was in labor, when a new nurse entered the room, I would slip my mask on quickly and wait to see how they felt about the mask mandate—either they would smile and encourage me to remove it if I wished, or they would enforce the rule, even correct me in the proper way of wearing it. It made for an added social awkwardness in an already stressful encounter. 

And there’s the vomitous mess of social media. It just hits allllll my insecurities. I quit Pinterest after one night when I lost track of the time and realized I had grown more and more dissatisfied with my life seeing all the things I didn’t have and wanted, the beautiful hair and face I wanted but didn’t have, the clean showroom house, etc. I nearly sprang back from the screen in self-disgust, and vowed to leave Pinterest forever. I recently quit Facebook (for a lot of reasons), but I would let it either ruin or make my day, depending on the number of social interactions I’d been granted through their algorithm. If one of my posts was ignored, I felt totally alone in the world. Yuck. 

In a neighboring town, there are signs littering yards with encouraging messages like “Don’t Ever Give Up” and “You’re Not Alone”. I hope they’re effective. But these signs with feel-good tropes are like manifested text messages or tweets, leaving their virtual world and joining the real world on real paper in a real yard. The one that always catches my attention is “You Matter”. Do I? Do I matter to you? If I knocked on your door truly in need, would I matter enough for a moment of your time, face-to-face? Or would you, out of fear and suspicion, turn me away? Would you, after you heard my political and religious beliefs, cry ‘hater’ and slam the door in my face? That’s what would happen virtually, and I’m not sure we know how to respond any other way right now. We’ve forgotten what authentic human interaction looks like.

During the Covid lockdown, one of my more social-media-savvy lady-friends from church started a messaging chat-group and a video-chat. It was a blessing in so many ways. We chatted and prayed through a friend’s delivery of her baby, shared recipes, laughs, and hardship. It was a way to “visit” each other when we couldn’t really visit each other. We’ve continued it even though we are certainly able to see each other face-to-face now. Out of the busy-ness of family life, it’s been an easy excuse to keep it up. Yet I find the same insecurities I experienced via Pinterest and Facebook creeping up even through these seemingly healthy mediums. The big answer is that, yes, I have some friend-wounds to work through. But also, it’s a relief to know I’m human: I find myself craving face-fo-face encounters. 

The other day, as I was driving to a friend’s house—to actually sit in her kitchen, have coffee, let our noisy kids play together— I thought of the Visitation. Mary went in haste to see her cousin. She didn’t think twice about it; it was an immediate response to the news that her cousin was in need and vulnerable. This act of service was an outpouring of love and the Holy Spirit’s presence within Mary. And I began to wonder whether I have been listening closely enough to that still, small voice; am I attentive to my brothers and sisters in need of friendship, especially now in this age of isolation? 

If I—I, admittedly terrible at friendship, quick to cut my losses and run instead of engaging—find myself craving authentic face-to-face encounters, then how many people out there are starving for friendship? Real friendship. Not the half-engaged, distracted comment-bomb-dropping of social media, or the awkward nods in the grocery store of people peering out from behind their masks, but real friendship that seeks to truly know, understand, and love each other. And with all things like this, I can’t just let this be a thought or idea- like a nice trope floating in cyberspace that people can thumbs-up or ‘heart’ (or poo)- I need to act, in haste.

Icon of the Visitation

with the women at the tomb

It’s Holy Week, the last week of Lent— and the third week of Oregon’s social distancing mandate because of the coronavirus pandemic— and the third week without Mass. It’s so strange to think of not going to Mass during Holy Week. I was doing okay with it. I was like, yes Lord, tell me what you want me to learn from this Eucharistic fast. And, as usual, my stamina began to give way. Fortitude is not my forte. I went to Confession (thank God we still have that) and afterwards found myself weeping like a Magdalene at the doors of the Church (“Where have you put my Lord?”), knowing Father was saying Mass just twenty yards away—our Lord was so close, but I couldn’t touch Him or see Him, let alone partake of His Body and Blood.  My eldest daughter, who was with me at the time, looked perplexed as I sobbed all the way home.

I texted a friend later and she had some very wise words that gave me peace and strength. She said my tears were a gift from our Blessed Mother on the eve of Palm Sunday, a gift to know a part of her sorrows as we begin Holy Week. Her beautiful words reminded me of something I had recently been pondering.

Just a week into the Oregon quarantine, my birthday present from my husband arrived one month late from the Ukraine. The timing couldn’t have been more providential. It was an icon of the resurrected Lord in the garden with three women looking on from a short distance away. It’s an icon I’ve been wanting for a while; about a year ago, while praying through the Consecration to Jesus through Mary, I was moved by the story of Mary Magdalene in the Gospel of John when, while weeping at the empty tomb, she recognizes Jesus’ voice calling her by name. Though I’ve heard and read that story many times, it struck me deeply as I imagined myself at the empty tomb, as I imagined Jesus calling me by name. Ever since then, my devotion to Mary Magdalene has grown as I’ve realized more ways I feel connected to her. This icon was the closest I could come to that beloved story in the Gospel.

But the icon offered so much more than what I had initially seen in it. As soon as I unwrapped it, my 13-year-old artist-daughter noted how fitting an icon it was for this strange time we’re in without Mass: we, like the women in the garden, gaze at our risen Lord, but are unable to get much nearer.

Prompted by her introspection, I meditated on the icon for a time, alone. I realized the three women were in the same shape that, in other icons, Christ’s hand takes as he makes the sign of the Trinity. The two standing women are turning towards one another with their hands gesturing towards the risen Christ. But the third woman, who I assume is Mary Magdalene by her posture, is kneeling and reaching towards Jesus. Everyone is dressed in white with accents of red, symbols of purity and the Spirit. Their white clothing is almost transparent, signifying the temporality of this world, but their faces and hands are solid, signifying the immortality of the soul. The icon is split unevenly down the middle: the side that Christ stands on has more depth, and seems to be higher ground, while the side the women are on is less defined and more flat. Christ’s hand reaches out towards them, palm-up. He is not going towards them, but greets and beckons generously; he does not look as though he’s there to dry their eyes, but stands matter-of-factly, as though His risen body is His testament, the proof of His love for them.

I’m not sure where I’m going to hang this icon; for now it is beside my bed so it is the first and last image I see in the day (besides my husband’s handsome face, of course). It has been a true gift for my heart during this time away from Our Lord’s table, and a reminder not to squander it (which I’ve definitely done at times). Ideally, love and desire should increase, a gratitude for the unique mystery of the Eucharist should strengthen, and awareness of my brothers and sisters throughout the world who live without the Sacraments readily available should take root in my heart where an on-going prayer for them can manifest.

What will Easter be like without a Eucharistic feast? I don’t know; probably sad to a degree, maybe anti-climactic. It’s good to feel that loss, to hate going without. But it will be a good spiritual exercise to remember our Blessed Mother and the women at the tomb who, though they could not touch Him as they could before, were overjoyed that He was truly risen.