Easter ii

This is the year it was real for me. I am unable to do the Catholic thing anymore, the whole placing yourself in the body of Jesus and imagining the pain of the passion. There is a tendency in Christianity to believe that if we become guilty enough thinking about the Crucifixion and imagining the sufferings of Christ, then we will do the right thing. Well, right or wrong I don’t have enough imagination in me to be guilty. But when I hear the psalms, the hymns, the scriptures in church, those three days: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Vigil on Holy Saturday, there is something much more powerful than guilt. I am compelled. I am changed. Last year things were so bad at that time of year. I felt like a country at the end of a bad war, through with some things, but having lost a great deal more. It would be a long time if ever before I recovered. Easter meant nothing more to me than survival. Jesus had survived all of the crap thrown on him. And this was good. But a little more was necessary. Like mission. Like hope. Like release.

To my surprise being an Anglican is making a Catholic out of me. I mean, there is a serious commission in the Anglican Church to be ecumenical, to reach out to brothers and sisters, to share bread at each others tables, and I know our church is already in communion with many other Christians. Lutherans, Methodists and Presbyterians role out of the doors of Saint James, have joint memberships in several churches. But Catholics and Anglicans do not church together. And here I am on one side saying,. “I am Anglican. I am ecumenical. I want to reach out to everyone,” But on the other side saying, “I have washed the Catholic Church from my hands. I’m through with that foolishness.”
And so, on Good Friday, at Saint James, hearing the Passion, I am very surprised when Jesus gently lets me know that this service will be over in plenty of time for me to hop a bus and be at Sacred Heart, my old Catholic parish, well before the service starts there.
And what will I find when I get there?
The Lord does not say.