By Sister Cynthia Serjak
Each Lent as I open my collection of seasonal reflection materials, I come across a simple card. On the front is the image of the black and white Mercy cross which the sisters used to wear. And on the back is something I wrote there several years ago: Dame la muerte que me falta. Give me the death I am missing, the death I am lacking, the death that I need. This request never fails to give me pause: What am I asking for this Lent? What is the death that I need this year? And where is my resurrection?
The longer I live the more I understand that the death I need and the resurrection I long for are tightly woven into the amazing grace that is life. That weaving is like a moebius strip – never ending, filled with energy, pulling me from one edge to the other. As seamless as the figure eight of an ice skater, the energy grows as I skate through the loops and am drawn back into the center of crossing. Death and resurrection are woven of the same grace-filled fabric called life. Catherine would say: Joys and sorrows mingled, one succeeding the other.
So, this Lenten season began like many others, as I readied myself to find moments of dying during this Lenten season. Then during the first week of Lent, there were five deaths: one of a sister in my community, three that were relatives of our sisters and another that was for a good friend from another religious community. Somewhere between the third and fourth funeral, I began to feel overwhelmed by death, caught in one side of my moebius loop, skating on the edge of the blade.
Then in the miracle of grace that is resurrection, my heart began to turn, and I heard myself saying: Dame la vida que me falta: Give me the life that I am missing, that I lack, that I need. Help me to understand how this resurrection thing works.
The feast of Easter centers us in this most important dynamic of our Christian experience. The challenging thing about believing in resurrection may not be that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, but that there is resurrection happening all around us, all the time. We die and rise many times in our lifetime, and the two are continuously unfolding in us.
There are moments of clarity, of new hope and energy that are small resurrections that remind us that our call is to continue believing, especially when things are bleak. Resurrection is our sure hope that ultimately God will prevail, and God’s goodness will reign. Our task is not only to believe that, but to throw ourselves into it so that it shines through in all we are and all we do, and so that it shows up to those around us on a regular basis. Dame la vida.
It’s all too easy to sit in the darkness and silence of Good Friday and Holy Saturday and focus on how bad things look and wonder where resurrection is. But we are Easter people. We acknowledge the struggle to proclaim life in the midst of all kinds of death, and we rejoice that we are privileged to be the ones tasked with announcing for all time: he is risen, and our resurrection is right here.