Exodus

This was the first Holy Week I spent alone. This was the first year of my life that I spent this time outside the church. And so the season of Lent, for me, culminated in silence. In years past, before college, I was head acolyte for the church in my hometown. Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday were a marathon of church-going. "Where you there when they crucified my Lord?" was the constant refrain in my shower. A doleful, joyous refrain. But such is Good Friday, at least for me. The smell of slow-burning candles in the shrouded church. Young acolytes fitted into their first vestments, feeling the heft of the cross for the first time. The tap of shoes on the aisle, a parade to the alter. The veneration of the cross: a moment when the men and women I aspired to become knelt before the cross, and wept. Tears shed as the bred was broken over the stripped alter. But the silence then was of a different kind: my community in mourning, in expectation, ready to exalt in the light of Easter morning. Not so with me, not this year. The candles burned in my heart, the fasts continued in memory, the somber, unspoken joy felt in the light of each dawn. For the first time in my life, I knew what it was like to transform my heart out of grief alone. The bells were rung, but only I heard them.

On Easter Sunday, my girlfriend and I were strangers in a strange land: a Baptist church in a nearby town. We held hands. I kissed her at the end of the service, sacramentally. And yet, there was no Eucharist: Easter left with a question instead of an answer. Next Sunday, when we return to our home church, we will receive the bread and wine. Somehow, I have yet to fully come home, to feel the risen Christ in every fiber of my being. Perhaps that is how it was meant to be. I cannot do this alone. Like the prodigal son, I return home. I expect nothing, but perhaps so much more will be given.