Easter

Easter was one of the most joyous and real holidays that I have celebrated in a while. Somehow the meaning of holidays and events seems to be a little shaded or tilted towards family traditions or individual preferences for me in the states, but here, it is dominately celebrated in the same union of spirit, for the same singular cause. Easter here was about Christ, walking with Him in a way that most of us never dare to outside of our daily lives. It wasn´t about the baskets of goodies burried around the house, or the special family brunches, or even different musical festivites on Sunday morning. It was about Christ, plain and simple. Beautiful.

We had the honor of being invited to paricipate in one of the renactments of Christ´s death, which meant that we would parade through the streets of Duran, following a man carrying a cross, with hundreds of witnesses doing the same. We were elected to be the town people, the bystanders that watched Jesus brutual walk up the mount. The procession started in the heat of the day, and the 3 hours that followed didn´t prove to be any cooler than high noon. We wore sheets, which looked like togas, to better prepare ourselves for the dress of the day. These proved to increase the heat, and made the journey a tad more realistic at the hint of suffering we tasted under all our layers. It was so moving, to be walking down the middle of the main street, cars haulting and stoped for blocks, and hundreds of people walk silently and mournfully behind the man carrying the cross. At times it was too bright to see anything, and in those blind moments of surrender, I felt like I could have actually been right there, broken hearted, witnessing the painful march, all done out of love, for me.

Later that night we did another procession to the church for 9pm mass. We started out a group of 30 of us, carrying candels and singing to the guitar that strummed along behind the cross. As we passed through the woven dirt roads of Arbolito, more and more people came out of their houses, carrying their own glowing prayers, their hopes and hearts. Before long, I turned around to find that there were hundreds of people, families, walking and singing into the cool April night, candles waving over the darkness. The most memorable thing for me was seeing all our of kids, all the little people that we pour our hearts to through our afterschool programs, wandering through the mountain of people, running up and grabbing our hands, walking arm and arm with us, singing and smiling together towards the goodness of God. It made me feel a familiar feeling, that of a community embraced and settled in love, reaching out and being enough.

The next night we had a mass at the larger church across town, and this one was also a candle light service, and being a part of their worship, of the lighting of the incense, of the kindling hope for what tomorrow, Easter Sunday, would reveal and change for the world, made it all seem like something very Divine, very much a part from our ordinary and human lives as volunteers.

I think that the focus on Christ, what He suffered and what He went through to deliver us over to eternal life, is what surpirsed and awed me the most. I had never put so much thought or energy into it, and it had never been displayed for me in such a community sense, where everyone worked at making it real and visible so that all might understand and live differently in light of what happened.

Christ rose. He is alive, and we are alive with Him.

That message still reverberates in me, to my bones. All of us, living as One, because of God´s love, displayed and written in death. Death turned to Life.


Peace be with you.