The Hole Has Been Made Whole

It is Easter morning. Potatoes are on the stove softening in the boiling water as we prepare our side dish for our family gathering. Our son sleeps after a long night at our parish’s Easter Vigil Mass. Our house is quiet and still, but not empty. My heart is bursting with hope this morning- hope in the Resurrection and Eternal life that awaits us. Three years ago, two years ago, even last year, I did not feel the same way on Easter. To be honest, it seemed like Good Friday never actually ended. I was experiencing a lot of suffering in the heartache of our lives not playing out as I had planned for myself. There are some key words here in that prior sentence if you didn’t catch them. It was as if an actual hole had been left in my heart, and sadly on Easter Sunday, that hole still didn’t feel filled again. This year however, the hole has been made whole. This wholeness that I now have isn’t because our circumstances have changed- they haven’t. It isn’t because I’ve had “enough time” to process this grief- I don’t know if I ever will. It isn’t because I have made different plans that can replace the dream I once I had- it was irreplaceable. But looking at the dream then and now, I’m realizing how these deep desires, while not suddenly replaceable, can be made new.

These past three years I have felt this emptiness, this void, that no worldly thing, no human comforts, and no number of counseling sessions could fill. None of these things are bad, and in fact, have been aids to finding that wholeness again. But the source of wholeness has come, came, and will always come from the Lord. He is the whole to our hole. He is the only one strong enough to help us pick up our cross. He is the only one that will wipe away every tear- the only one who will ever truly understand. We are never alone. Grace upon grace has been measured out to me. Only this year did I make myself a ready vessel to receive it. This grace has me bursting inside my own skin. I can feel the weight of my cross being supported behind me. When it starts to feel too heavy, I turn around, and He is there. A bright but familiar light. A face I can’t quite make out through the light, but I know in my heart it is Him. We walk together with this cross, even though He walked alone with His. Simon came to help bear some of the weight, and then had to leave Him once again to be nailed to the very wood he had to carry. “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” I felt this too. I met Him there in these words. Why Jesus, did you abandon me? Of course, He didn’t. He never left. I alone formed an outer hard shell around this hole, with no receptivity to the grace He so desperately longed to give me.

Every year, I take on a word guided by the Holy Spirit, more on this later. This year, my word of the year is Receive. And so I will. I will receive every cross I am asked to carry especially this one, even though it terrifies me. But with the cross, I will be open to the grace to carry it. I will look over my shoulder and see the Lord there. I will receive all the hardships but also all the joy of the light of the Resurrection. I will look in hope not in what is to come in this life (though I will trust Him in this) but in life Eternal. This is the life my soul longs for. He is the fill for the void. He filled the empty tomb with his precious Body and Blood, and in three days, He filled it with His glorious light and resurrected life. My Lord and my God! Thank you for making me whole.