Easter is Canceled

Dear beloved family members who were expecting to join us for an Easter celebration this weekend:

We're sorry to let you know that the festivities will not be able to happen at our home this year. One child is running a fever, and the other is sneezing over every visible surface. No, she does not reliably cover her sneezes yet. And no, she doesn't know how to wipe her nose on anything but the back of her hand.

Believe us, we wish we could have hosted Easter this year too, instead of being Sick Ward One. Alas.

It's only Thursday morning today, Holy Thursday. The day of Jesus' Last Supper. Although today, it feels like tonight will more resemble a commemoration of the Agony in the Garden. If only this germy, backwash-infused cup might pass from us. Neither kid sleeps while sick, so tonight, odds are neither of us will either.

At the Last Supper, Jesus instituted the Eucharist: his greatest miracle. At our wedding, we asked to hear the reading of his first miracle, which took place at the Wedding at Cana. We wanted to remember Jesus' and Mary's closeness to the newlywed couple, and to believe that they stood equally close to us as we exchanged our vows. We wanted them present at the first moments of our marriage, and in every moment which would follow.

We were told great graces would be poured upon us on our wedding day, graces that would be sufficient to sustain us through all the trials and hardships that would surface throughout the years of our marriage.

Somewhere in that waterfall of graces there must have been the graces for this day too:

Grace for cancelled Easter celebrations.

Grace for nights spent sitting up alongside the Blessed Virgin, aleviating our children's sufferings in any way we can.

Grace for wiping snot and blood and who knows what other bodily fluids off every surface imaginable, including our children's faces.

Grace to pour ourselves out completely, and grace to still be able to receive.

I wonder whether the couple who were married at Cana knew where the path of their day's savior led. Did they hear word of, or even witness, his crucifixion three years later?

Perhaps they did know, through their own experiences if not through their physical witness. If their married life was anything like mine, they probably encountered their fair share of suffering and spit-up and snot. As they lived their silent crucifixions, I don't think they would have imagined their Savior's vocation to lead him anywhere other than the cross.

Love, lived out fully, always leads to death.

Death of selfishness.

Death of youthfulness.

Death for the sake of the beloved.

I hope our wedding day also affords us the grace to learn the difficult beauty of our Lord's, and our, vocations. I hope we allow that beauty to be carved upon our hearts. I hope that, even if our Easter celebration is canceled this year, that our Good Friday remembrance is not.

And really, even if our Easter party won't take place this year, our Easter joy will remain unaffected because love, lived out fully, cannot be bound by death. Eternal life always awaits.