John Paul II wrote: “Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people.”
An Easter person is someone who believes it is
possible to rise up from any enormous tragedy, to be transformed, and courageously
continue the journey. It doesn’t matter what religion you profess, or even
if you don’t believe in the mystery of Easter. If you can recognize that
it is possible each one of us can rise up from a miserable situation and be
transformed, than you are an Easter person.
But what if the
situation is so bad and so horrendous you can’t see the end of suffering or
find hope in what seems to be a collapsing situation? I recently sat with
a young client whose life has been one miserable event after another and who
feels despondent about it, as well as about the political climate in our
country.
As a spiritual
director I sit and listen with compassion and an open heart. And I have to
fight my desire to want to fix things and make people happy again. I do
not have the power or the insight to know how to fix people or political
corruption.
I held my
client’s hands and prayed for something good to come, to ease her
burden. I believed it would come. And when I said “amen,” she gave a
little cynical snort and we both laughed. I said, “Would you have rather I
prayed in cynical snorts?” And then I snorted several times more and said
“amen.” We both laughed again. We hugged and said goodbye, and I was sure
that she felt a bit better.
Have you ever
been in a situation that was so miserable it overwhelmed and tired you out, and
all you could do was just sit back and laugh about it? Well it’s in that
moment afterwards—when you stop laughing, or crying, or whatever defeatist
emotion rises up--it's when you take in your next breath, stand back up and
start over again, that you become an Easter person.
