Easter experienced anew through eyes of children

Each Easter we hear of new life and resurrection. We listen and re-experience the passion, finding ourselves in the presence of the crowd of naysayers and those ready to condemn Jesus.

And, perhaps, we find that each year the experience of Jesus’ death and resurrection resonates differently.

As a child, I remember distinctly dreading the coming of Easter. As someone with terrible spring allergies, Easter falls directly in the midst of sickness and suffering.

I would think intensely about my stuffy nose and wheezing cough and directly relate them to the suffering being described in Jesus’s passion. Death, in my childlike state, seemed acutely similar to my struggle to breathe.

As I got older and experienced the services for myself, my allergies didn’t disappear, but I found the ritual aspects to be intriguing and beautiful.

The Easter Vigil, with its lighting of the candle and darkness, the beauty of the liturgical vestments and the poetry in the Scriptures – all reminded me of the beauty and awe that drew the end-of-the-19th-century writers and poets (like Oscar Wilde) to convert to Catholicism.

  Now, I experience it through the eyes of my children. And, unfortunately, those eyes are blurry and scattered.

For the past week, we’ve realized that all of the children have “inherited” my seasonal allergies. What started as stuffy noses and dry cough turned into skin rashes and lamentations of “eyes hurt” as they desperately scratch at their itchy eyes.

On top of that, out of nowhere, flash fevers came: while we were putting Easter clings on the window, one of my children came over to me and told me he was warm. The alarming temperature of over 104 degrees was intense.

As we’ve gone through waves of feeling poorly, I’ve been thinking of the “newness” of new life and how these waves resonate with it.

New life doesn’t just appear; there are struggles. There are ups and downs. We imagine the brightly colored flower that appears after the coldness of the winter. But, in fact, that flower has undergone tremendous growth and struggle beneath the soil and out of our sight.

As my children staggered around, depleted of energy and only wanted to cuddle on the couch after getting their medicines, I thought of that “newness.”

The haze and uncertainty, alongside the shock, of the disciples as Jesus was taken from them. Their pain and mourning as the lives that they had lived came to an abrupt stop as they were met with ridicule.

Those are the aspects of the Easter season that resonated with me this year. The struggle, the uncertainty, the pain. All reminders of the necessity of discomfort that accompanies resurrection. The message, for me, this year seems to be: We cannot be made new without undergoing tribulation.

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