There is a hushed solemnity to this sacred pocket of time between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, as if much of the world waits with bated breath for something miraculous to happen. Not to mix religious metaphors, but it’s a purgatorial sort of place, located somewhere between sorrow and hope – a common and fertile space where humans reveal whether they’re on the side of cynicism or optimism.
For someone who has traditionally reveled in the anticipation of everything, I never found much solace or joy in the Saturday before Easter. Maybe all the anxiety and stress of serving so many masses during Holy Week had my mind too wound up to lower its guard and relax, especially when the biggest Holy Day of the year was yet to come. Church was always fraught with that discomfort and strain. I tried to focus on God and what constituted the true lessons and meanings of all that scripture, all those stories, but in the end it was just me and my social anxiety trying to get through being part of that black-and-white-clad parade of altar boys and priests.
A pause, then, in this spring of 2023 – a pause before Easter, a pause before resurrection, a pause before any miracle. A pause to determine whether we will stay in the dark or move toward the light. There is always that choice. I want to believe we would all try to be better, but I’ve seen the hurt and harm humans can do to one another. No amount of faith or believing can counter the utter lack of humanity with which some people have been left.
It’s been a while since I’ve returned to the church in my memory bank. There are no great or horrid secrets lurking there – whatever tragic fate befell so many other altar boys never touched me. Whispers of it remained elusively on the periphery of my experience, and maybe the danger lurked closer than I knew, but no abusive horrors informed my altar boy years. Instead, it was the dogged and consistent strain of anxiety of facing a church filled with staring faces that wreaked its havoc. Every Sunday I would dread the mistake or mis-step that would lead to the ringing of the bells at the wrong time, or a missed cue to bring the priest the gospel, resulting in frantic snaps of his fingers beneath his flowing robes. I wanted to please the priest, I wanted to please my parents, I wanted to please every person in the pews, and I wanted to please God. That’s a lot of emotional pressure on a kid whose baseline nature was not naturally pleasant.
