A Message from the Bishop: Surprised by Love, an Easter Reflection

Dear Beloved of El Camino Real,

I hope that your Easter Day dawned brightly and that you are enjoying new signs of life all around.

Holy Week is often a very busy time for clergy, musicians, altar guilds and other committed lay leaders in our congregations.  At times, Easter morning arrives and while we are glad for the beauty of it all, a deeper reflection about its significance may be delayed.  This year, unusually, the deeper meaning came to me early—and that is what I want to share with you.

Last week, Holy Week, I had the opportunity to be at the bedside of one of our beloved leaders.  We said Eucharist, he mouthed a few of the words, and I placed a drop of wine on his lips.  He licked it, gently receiving the Blood of Christ in the best way he could.

Watching him, aware of the brokenness of his body, I felt my own heart break.  It was almost a physical experience, as a wave of grief coursed through my body.  And in that same wrenching moment, I recognized something else: the room was filled with a rich and abiding love.
 
In John’s Gospel, Mary Magdalene stands outside the tomb weeping.  She is completely caught in despair, her heart broken in a way she had not known before. She had been focused on all that she knew, for her task was to anoint the broken body—and she could not even do that.  I believe it was her complete heartbreak that allowed for the loving act of the resurrection to become apparent to her, and that love was so evident that she risked telling others.

We even know about Peter in the Gospel of Luke, who weeps bitterly after he denies Jesus, thus paving the way for knowing himself beloved again.  For as Psalm 34 tells us, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted.”  Peter’s tears, the grief over his own actions and the death of his friend, led him to eventually become a prominent leader in the proclamation of the resurrection, thus bringing forth God’s message of overwhelming love and impossible hope.

While at the bedside of a friend, in the silence of our grief, thinking about the state of the world, there is room for an awareness of something quite surprising. God’s love, abiding and steadfast moves to more than fill the gap that is created by our broken hearts.  

May we be blessed to know this great love, as with Mary, we proclaim, “He is risen.”  For he is risen, yesterday, today and tomorrow, filling the cracks of our hearts and infusing our broken world with a rich and abiding love.

Faithfully,

Fourth Bishop of the Diocese of El Camino Real