On Faith

This is the story of my spiritual journey, a road I’m still traveling. I’m a spiritual work in progress and have no intention of trying to prove anything to anyone in my writing. Rather, I only want to share where I’m at this Holy Week, my doubts, my yearning for blind faith, my humble acknowledgement that this world is bigger than I could ever imagine.

Good Friday — Holy Saturday — Easter Sunday 

I never used to worry about an after-life. I’m Catholic and the resurrection is a big deal, but it wasn’t why I tried to live a Christ-like life. I wasn’t sure what happened when we die, and I didn’t worry about it. I figured I’d find out when I got there.

I have always believed in Jesus, that he suffered; he died; he rose again. For too many reasons to list, I’ve never doubted any of this. But the connection between Jesus rising again and eternal life for those who believe? That’s the hard part. The dying, the burial, they were on this earth. Eternal life is not. I don’t think. I don’t know! What’s eternal life look like? I didn’t have the brain cells to fathom it, so, like a complicated sentence in a physics book, I skimmed over it.

It was easy to skim over the resurrection as a kid. We mostly focused on the dying part anyway. I had twelve years of Catholic schools, and, when I was in grammar school, on Good Friday, between noon and 3:00 p.m., I went to church. Those were the hours, according to Sister Maureen Christine, that Jesus suffered on the cross. Those hours should be spent reflecting on His agony, the sacrifice He made for us.

Later, I’d call this Catholic guilt. I’d see it, ironically, in the cross. In a Christian Non-Catholic church, the cross is a heavy-duty shiny piece of wood formed in a lower-case T. We Catholics hang Jesus, in agony, dying, blood-stained from His crown of thorns, a shrunken rib cage, nails pounded into his hands and feet. For years, I struggled to understand why the Catholic church made us feel so guilty about everything that happened to Jesus on Good Friday.

But I get it now. It’s not guilt. It’s reality. That’s what Good Friday is: Real Suffering. Complete anguish. Even if you don’t believe that Jesus is God’s Son, there’s no arguing that what happened on Good Friday really sucked.

Years after I sat in church on Good Friday, I learned that everyone who has truly loved, at some point in their lives, will endure their own personal Good Friday. For us, Good Friday was November 10, 2023. The day we lost Steve.

I also learned that if you endure a Good Friday, you can’t just skim over the afterlife part. You need to believe. After we lost Steve,  I yearned for Easter Sunday with every fiber of my being. I dove into prayer and research. I listened to preachers, theologians, atheists; I tried to find something that would explain that complicated sentence in the physics book.

I can see Steve shake his head. “Come on, Mom, you taught us this stuff.”

I did. I taught Sunday school for years. But nothing — not the empathy gained from sitting in a church for three hours on Good Friday for years, not the years of teaching children about the Easter Triduum — prepared me for this level of grief. They say that you’re only drawn closer to God when you go through something like this. They’re right. Before this level of grief, my relationship with God was easy. Nothing brings out the “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” like real suffering.

I long for the blind faith I had as a kid. I pray; I read; I listen. I look for the signs, for Jesus on the Road to Emmaus. The signs help; they convince us there is so much more.

We saw one of the first signs on one of the worst days of our lives. Steve’s body was not recovered for weeks and just five days before Christmas in 2023, we drove to Dover Air Force Base for the dignified transfer of his remains. Another day of Hell for us.

We stayed in the Fisher House, close to the airfield. The plane with Steve’s body, and the bodies of the other crew members, was scheduled to land at 11:00 a.m. After the plane landed, military vans would transport us to the tarmac.

I was in my room alone, crying, filled with dread anticipating the upcoming nightmare: a flag-draped casket carrying my firstborn. Something tapped. Repetitively. No one was at my door. I wondered if it were the heater. I didn’t know where the light constant knocking came from, but it was time to go, so I walked across the hall to gather in our daughter-in-law’s room. Something tapped. Repetitive, louder. We looked around the room, baffled. Finally, we pulled the curtain back. The clock read 11:00 a.m. A single red cardinal knocked on the window.  

Signs, the overwhelming feeling that Steve is still with us, confirm to me that I’m not capable of understanding the why; I’m not able to understand the what happens next.

“Come on, Mom. You taught us this stuff,” my son reminds me. And he’s right.

Here’s what I know: Only after being hung on the cross, could Jesus rise from the dead. Only after being plunged into the darkness of Good Friday, could we have Easter Sunday. We may spend years on Mount Calvary, deep in grief. We may spend years outside the tomb on Holy Saturday, sad, confused, anxious about the future. But only after enduring Good Friday and Holy Saturday, will the sun rise for us on Easter Sunday. And we need that sun to rise. We need the resurrection. We need to see our loved ones again.