For a long time, I have struggled to keep the Resurrection—and the new life I believe that comes with it--alive in my post-Easter daily life. And in 2020, this is an even more difficult task because we are living with the “new life” of a pandemic. I believe in the Resurrection but, in an odd way, I don’t think my belief, however weak or uncertain, is the issue. Instead, the issue is what to do with this belief. This is the “now what?” moment, a moment when, as Toni Morrison has said, …”the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence.” (The Nation,  March 23, 2015) 

Fortunately, there is guidance and wisdom to be found in the scripture lessons from the Easter Season, the period from Easter (April 12) through Pentecost (May 31).  The Easter Season is perhaps the richest liturgical period in the Church Year because of its three major events: the Resurrection, the Ascension, and Pentecost. If we take time, in silence, to read closely and reflect on the scripture lessons that come during the full Easter season, we will discover a number of signpost readings during these seven-weeks, each of which offers some help about how to sustain the new life that comes with our belief in the Resurrection. In these signpost readings there is a story that unfolds.

The most instructive, and perhaps most important, part of the story is the Gospel lesson, Luke: 24: 13-49, which is used for the Easter Evening service, the Wednesday of Easter Week and the Third Sunday after Easter. This is the well-known ‘Road to Emmaus” text, in which two disciples meet a stranger on their seven-mile journey to Emmaus from Jerusalem. After the three walked together for a while, the disciples invited the stranger to join them for dinner. The disciples still had no idea who the stranger was and only after he blessed and broke bread and gave it to them as he explained scripture, did the two disciples “see” that the stranger was Jesus. We all know this part of Luke’s story, but what we may not remember is that the passage also includes a description of a second appearance to those who had gathered to hear the story from the two disciples who met Jesus on the road to Emmaus.” ‘Peace be with you,’ Jesus says. They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost [Jesus] said to them, ‘why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts’ “?

This second part of Luke’s lesson, in my view the most important part, shows clearly that the apostles and their companions were filled with fear, disbelief, confusion, doubt and maybe even dread. Still raw from their miserable failure to stand with Jesus during his passion and death, these followers of Jesus really did not know how to think and feel about anything, especially when they were trying to make sense of Jesus’s Resurrection. Who is this Jesus? Is he the same Jesus they knew before the Resurrection, the One who was their whole life and the One whose suffering they fled? Is this the God Jesus in whose presence they lived and worked?  They did not know what to believe or what to do. And what is worse, they really weren’t sure if they believed in THIS God Jesus.  Now what?

The key here comes in the last verse of Luke’s lesson, the verse that we read and may not fully grasp. This is the verse (49) when Jesus offers reassurance to the apostles, saying that he will send them what the Father promised and that they would be “clothed with power from on high.“  These words open our understanding of the other Easter Season scripture lessons, especially the readings from Acts and from the Letters of Peter. There we see the transformation of the apostles “from fearful, doubtful, confused disbelievers to inspired, enlightened, certain, and prayerful people of God, living, thinking and speaking in His presence.  No longer hidden from active and engaged lives, the apostles moved enthusiastically out of their hiddenness and joyfully into the world, into the new life that comes with the Resurrection.

But one must say, respectfully, that the apostles and their companions did not have to face the chaos, horror and pain of a pandemic as we do, and were not left with the over-powering feeling of helplessness that we have.

So we come once again to the “what now” with which we began. In this time of enormous suffering, terrible illness, death and loss and failures of all kinds, what is there for us to do? Doctors, nurses, and medical staff must treat and heal; social welfare workers must support and feed; people in government must cooperate and strategize, this we know. We also know that artists must continue to create, journalists must continue to write and publish, and millions of people must learn how to work and live differently, mostly in solitude.  What do we believers do then?

We make our solitude, maybe even living as “monks,” a way of life, for who knows how long the dangers and frightening presence of the COVID-19 virus will last. And we pray, however we can, remembering what Thomas Merton has told us: “There is no such thing as a prayer in which ‘nothing is done’ or ‘nothing happens,’ although there may well be a prayer in which nothing is perceived or felt.” (Thoughts in Solitude).

Yes, we pray, as we look to Pentecost on May 31. Then what?