We Are the Easter People

           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.