An Eastertide Reflection
Easter 10am service at St. Anne’s
From the Easter Vigil through sundown on Easter Sunday, we welcomed over 940 people to bear witness to the resurrection. We also had more than 400 attending or participating in the fellowship and worship offerings for Maundy Thursday, the Altar of Repose, and Good Friday. During Holy Week, I was reminded of a fundamental spiritual truth: Without the agony of Holy Week, the joy of Easter is meaningless.
From that spiritual truth, I have begun to contemplate the meaning and nature of loneliness. The times when I most valued community are when I have felt lonely and isolated. The peril of loneliness for me is when I internalize the untruth that I am alone in the world and that no one cares for or about me. While intellectually, I know the feeling of loneliness to be untrue, there are times, particularly in crisis points of leadership, where the feeling of loneliness and isolation is deeply felt. It is in times when I feel lonely that I seek community. The community that envelops me is marked by the love of Christ, and just like the two folks on their journey to Emmaus, I find Christ walking with me and making Himself known to me through honest, vulnerable, and loving conversations centered on His broken Body and shed Blood. The curious thing about my community is that it is not necessarily people that I am intimate or familiar with. For my community consists of thought leaders to my friend, James, who makes his home on the street. Yet, what binds us together is the fact that we are all on the journey of life, seeking deeper meaning humbly approaching Truth. However, as a human being, I sometimes take this community for granted. That’s why periods of loneliness and isolation serve as an inflection point – a reminder that I am meant to be in community. Just like Easter is utterly meaningless without Holy Week, for me, community is utterly meaningless without a driving desire to part from isolation.
My friends, perhaps you know of someone who is beset by a feeling of isolation and loneliness. Perhaps the Easter imperative is for you to reach out and proclaim, “Alleluia, Christ is Risen,” and because of Christ’s resurrection, you are not alone! In proclaiming the truth that Christ is with us in our journey of life, perhaps the next step is to connect them with a community of believers who seek community by getting to know Christ more and more each day.
The Rev. Dr. Manoj Matthew Zacharia, Rector, St. Anne’s