One day I arrived at the hospital early and I found my little angel alone in her room. I asked her where her mother was. To this day I cannot recount her response without becoming very emotional.
One day I arrived at the hospital early and I found my little angel alone in her room. I asked her where her mother was. To this day I cannot recount her response without becoming very emotional.
“Sometimes my mother leaves the room to cry in the hallway in secret. When I’m dead, I think my mother will miss me, but I’m not afraid to die. I wasn’t born for this life!”
“What does death represent for you, my dear?” I asked her.
“When we’re little, sometimes we go to sleep in our parent’s bed, and the day after we wake up in our own bed, isn’t that right?” I thought about my own daughters, who at the time were six and two, and this is exactly what happened with them.
“That’s what it’s like. One day I will go to sleep and my Father will come for me. I will wake up in His house, in my true life!”
I was stunned, and didn’t know what to say. I was shocked by the maturity which suffering had brought about in the spirit of that child.
Oncologist Dr. Rogério Brandão tells the story of this eleven-year old angel exhausted by two years of injections, chemical treatment programs and radiation. “I never saw that little angel give up,” he tells us. “I saw her cry many times. I also saw the fear in her eyes, but that is only human.”
During Lent we try to follow Christ. As Nikos Kazantzakis poetically puts it, we “walk in Christ's bloody footsteps, that is, to walk inside of mess and failure, misunderstanding and crucifixion, confusion and tiredness, darkness and God's seeming silence, wondering sometimes if you will indeed find a stone upon which to lay your head.”
Easter finds us still human, still prone to our weaknesses and doubts. But the Resurrection must fill us with hope. Easter tells us that Christ promises us the Kingdom, just as he told Dismas on the Cross, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”
Easter is the culmination of a joy that started at Christmas with the birth of our Saviour. The light that came into our world at Bethlehem grows brighter as the Easter Candle lights our journey.
At Christmas, through his grace-filled birth, God says to the world: "I am there. I am with you. I am your life. ... Do not be afraid to be happy. For ever since I wept, joy is the standard of living that is really more suitable than the anxiety and grief of those who think they have no hope.
“…This reality, this incomparable wonder of my almighty love, I have sheltered safely in the cold stable of your world. I am there. I no longer go away from this world. Even if you do not see me. I am there. It is Christmas. Light the candles! They have more right to exist than all the darkness. It is Christmas. Christmas lasts forever." Karl Rahner
It is Easter! Light a bigger candle! Let the Alleluias of the Angels that heralded the Birth of Jesus echo in our Alleluias celebrating the Risen Christ. Resurrection is forever. We are not born merely for life on this earth.
