Behold…I come to do Your will.
COVID. One week we were in Mass, and the next the doors were locked. For me, with this pandemic and fear came a frenzied need to pray and draw close to God. Rosaries, Divine Mercy Chaplets, Confession, online Masses and prayers I’ve never prayed before were coming from our dining room “school” table all of March. Then, Holy Week arrived, and I really started to ramp up my efforts. Extra Bible readings, crafts, fasting...We were working our way through Holy Week with a fervor unlike anything I had ever known. After the bleakest Lent ever, I just knew that Easter was going to bring something big! The end of COVID? Jesus himself? I wasn’t sure, but after all our prayers and suffering I was pretty sure it was going to be BIG!
And then Easter came. A rainy, dark, Easter morning. The storm had cut our internet, so there was no online Mass, and our extended family was quarantined elsewhere so I was left with an Easter meal to prepare…all by myself. Nothing big, except for the tears that poured down my face most of the day, as I went about a dressed-up version of the same mundane quarantine we’d now known for 4 weeks. Desperation grew in my heart as I cried out that I had done His will. I had prayed and fasted and done everything I could to draw close to Him, so why this?
Easter Monday arrived and there was no rosary, no divine mercy chaplet, no prayer at all. I found myself in such a dark place. What was the point when things only seemed to be getting lonelier and scarier? After some good spiritual direction, I started going through the motions, forcing myself to fit in some prayer time and spiritual reading. But the feels? The good “wrap you in a hug from Jesus” prayer time feels? Those were still missing. Friends were talking about the Easter season, how much they love these readings and how excited they were for Pentecost, and I just kept going through the motions.
Then the news came that we had all been waiting for — churches would be reopening for Pentecost. We would once again be able to go and receive the Eucharist and worship in communion with one another.
It dawned on me later that I should have wanted to find the first daily Mass available and run to it to receive the Eucharist…but I didn’t. Had it not been for my husband and kids, I don’t know that I even would have made it that first Sunday.
But Sunday came, and finally, we were back in the church. And although it looked a little weird, and I wasn’t loving my mask, we were back. Mass began, and it wasn’t big, but I went through the motions and this time the motions started to feel beautiful again. Not overwhelmingly beautiful. Not happy tears running down your cheeks, beautiful. Just the slightest whisper reminding me to keep at it, beautiful. So the next week we went back and the week after and the week after, because I knew that was God’s will, even if it didn’t feel big.
Now, here we are 6 months from the initial shutdown of the COVID-19 Pandemic and I find myself in thanksgiving to God for giving me the fortitude to listen and follow His will in a dark time, when I couldn’t see the fruit it would bear. I am thankful to Him for the random week in July when it finally felt big: happy tears running down your cheeks after receiving the Eucharist, kind of big. But most of all, I am thankful for all the weeks in between that felt dark and distant, because it was in those days I learned that when I make the choice to follow God’s will, He will always carry me through.
This blog post was written by Laura Murray, hospitality chair.