Living the Paschal MysteryAugust 05, 2024

Living the Paschal Mystery

Thirty years ago, I traveled to El Salvador. I was there for the anniversary of Sister Dorothy Kazel and the Churchwomen. I traveled alone which gave me the opportunity to visit with three close friends and a former student who were all on the mission team.

It was early spring and shortly after the end of the war. Salvador was no longer a vacationland of beauty but one of much suffering and death. As the plane banked toward the airport the faces of the women, our martyrs, came to mind and my friends who had lived through this war that had taken the lives of these missionaries. As we touched down on that Monday of Holy Week, I wondered how this journey would change me. Would this land of the Savior invite new insight into the paschal mystery? Would my pilgrimage through the most sacred week of the year, “Samana Santa,” deepen my understanding of what it means to share in the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus? My prayer was for the grace to become more open to life with the Savior, to view life from a paschal perspective, seeing all forms of diminishement as well as reconciliation and fidelity as an invitation to be a new creation.

I was not disappointed! From the first day until the plane took off for Houston three week later, the beauty and the simplicity of a land and a people whose lives are intertwined with this mystery of Jesus that we celebrate together in every Eucharist overwhelmed me. I truly felt that this was my first Easter and I was the catechumen. The openness that I experienced from all the people with whom I could only exchange a smile and a hung or a handshake made me feel right at home. Everyone who knew a few words in English was eager to share them with me. I was welcomed into the choir where I happily hummed along to some very familiar melodies and gratefully felt part of the celebrations. I was elated when they chose Resucito’ at the Easter vigil and I was able to sing along. Thank you, Sister Martha Owen!

The children were a presence of love and warmth. They enthusiastically hug you as often as they can. They surrounded me every time I walked down the streets of Saragosa, cheerfully chatting away, assuming that we were communicating—and we were communicating the love and care of Jesus that they trusted was always present in every one of our missionaries.

I was totally engaged by the living out of the mystery of Jesus in the rituals of Holy Week. I sensed that these rituals, the processions and the liturgies had a life of their own. They called forth the folks from every canton and promised that Jesus walks with them. Through the rituals, the people hear and experience the gift of the God in whose love they live and in whose hope they trust.

I was especially taken by the Stations of the Cross, enacted throughout the village of Saragosa. Most everyone participated as the procession wended its way through the tiny streets and up the hills of the village, stopping periodically at the altars erected to commemorate each station. It was a holy journey for me as we walked in the afternoon sun, most oblivious of the heat. Vendors were selling cool drinks and food to the crowd as we followed the cross and prayed and sang together. Animals were always present as were the children and babies too young to understand the seriousness of this event. I kept think of how like the journey of Jesus through the streets of Jerusalem this was. I was moved to tears several times as the reality of this paschal mystery played itself out on the streets before me. So many here understood far better than I the pain of betrayal or knew firsthand the suffering of a mother seeing her son brutally treated, even killed. El Salvador was for me proof that the darkness of this broken world of ours cannot withstand the power of the dawn of new creation.

The paschal mystery was never so present as in the lives of these people as they prayed and witnessed to the goodness of God in the midst of death and suffering. Perhaps, it is because life is so difficult that these folks understand what it is to live on the edge of life, to suffer the loss of everything, and yet remain hopeful. Or, perhaps, it is because life is just a daily struggle to exist and there are no distractions that matter more than community and relationsionships.

Let us pray for our world, struggling for peace and unity yet so wracked with war and division.

Jesus, Savior of the world. We stand with you and in you and beg for the grace to stand with one another. Guide us toward peace and unity which can only come to us by deepening our faith and trust in your holy mystery. Bring together the lives of all people so that we may touch each other as you touch us in the mystery of the new creation. Help our world recognize that we are in need of love. Amen.

Sister Mary Ellen Brinovec