Dear Friends: Sending you all Easter blessings and gratitude for joining us for our Lenten journey this year (and also one more reflection!). I am grateful for all of our writers and for the kind words you shared with me along the way. Thank you for the many ways you reflect the mystery and beauty of the resurrection to our campus.
Reading:
I’ve come to think that the only, the supreme prayer
we can offer up, during these hours
when the road before us is shrouded in darkness
is that of our Master on the Cross
‘Into your hands I commend my spirit’
to the hands that broke and gave life to the bread,
that blessed and caressed, that were pierced;…
to the kindly and mighty hands that reach down
to the very marrow of our souls– that mould and create–
to the hands through which so great a love is transmitted-
it is to these hands that it is good to surrender our soul,
above all when we suffer or are afraid.
And in doing so there is great happiness and great merit.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ
Reflection:
On Holy Saturday, TCU hosted Kwibuka 25. Kwibuka means ‘to remember’ and describes the annual commemoration of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Hundreds of members of the Rwandan community in DFW graced our campus, many wearing a traditional mushanana. As survivors recounted their testimonies, members of the audience wept with fierce intensity. And how could you not weep? How could you not hold your hand over your mouth and feel overwhelmed with horror?
And then, on Easter, the attacks in Sri Lanka startled us all out of our Easter bliss.
And, dear friends, I don’t have pretty words to make us feel better. I just don’t today. Each time I read the news, I bear witness to more hate and more hate and more hate and my heart hurts so much I wish I could just turn it off. The news, my heart. All of it.
Please don’t ask me to think about the resurrection, God. My heart is heavy. My spirit is weary. Like the disciples after the crucifixion and burial of Jesus, I feel hopeless and afraid. I feel trapped in Good Friday as the world erupts in violence all around me.
It is good, then, that the Easter season is fifty days long. The walk to communion each Sunday gives me more time to try to understand the Paschal Mystery. To look for the Risen Christ in the bombed out buildings of Colombo, to see the Risen Christ in the eyes of my friends who survived the genocide in Rwanda, to hear the Risen Christ despite the noisy hate speech percolating online. To be the Risen Christ to those most in need of the loving presence of God.
Prayer:
God, as Easter stretches into Pentecost Sunday, help me surrender my spirit to you. Fill me with wisdom and strength as I look for the Risen Christ in our suffering world. I pray, God, for fear to die in me; for hope to rise in me; for the courage to be Christ in hurting communities.
Britt Luby
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