Dear Friends in Christ,

As I’ve watched the news come in from California, a strange set of memories— two very specific moments from my childhood—came to mind.

The first was a brief one from when I was nine or so. I was on the small playground in the courtyard of the apartment complex in which my dad and I lived. I was in a neighbor’s stairwell and I had my Boba Fett and Grand Moff Tarkin action figures, and they were having some face-off or another on the handrail on the steps.

I’m sure the neighbor heard me on the metal stairs that led down to the small landing they had, and they opened the sliding door to the landing. I kept playing without really turning around to acknowledge them.

I don’t know how much time had passed or what I looked like in the moment. But the neighbor asked, “Are you ok?” I responded, matter of factly as I remember it, “My mom died today.”

A few minutes before, I had heard the news. My dad had bought me the two action figures, perhaps to soften what had happened somehow. She had been sick for a while so it wasn’t a surprise but it was still a shock. I asked him if I could go play. Off I went to process it. Somehow.

The second memory was similar. It was from a few years later.

I was walking up the seemingly long sidewalk to the front doors of the school. The principal was there, as always, greeting students as they ran or walked or skipped into the building. I made my way up, and I don’t know what prompted the question, but the principal asked, “Is everything ok?”

I responded, matter of factly as I remember it, “My sister died last night.” To be honest I don’t remember whether the principal was a man or a woman.

It’s strange, isn’t it, how grief so narrows our memory? We remember some things with such vivid detail and others just slip away amidst the focus.

I do remember there was some confusion about why I’d be right back at school. But that’s who we were. Things happened and we went back to work.

As I watched the scenes unfolding in California I thought, things happen and then we get back to work. But so many memories will be seared—branded or burned. So many will have some vivid recollection of fine details even as others slip away in the focus.

I don’t know what all of the memories of the Blessed Mother or the Beloved Disciple or the others were there at the foot of the Cross. Who knows what details they recounted. Were they mundane things like the sound of a hammer? Or were they harsher things? We don’t know. What we do know is that those memories weren’t the last of that day.

Before they could be shaped by those memories alone, Christ returned. Resurrection became the new reality—more than memory.

It’s a hard thing to be a people of hope when the harshest moments come most vividly. All of us, across time, in countless numbers will have those moments that threaten to define us. The memories come hard and swift at unexpected moments.

But hope comes just so, too. Hope rallies when memories close in. The Cross is not the story of harsh memory but of new reality.

Thanks be to God that we have a Savior who has taken these hard journeys with us.

Thanks be to God that we are not prisoners of Crucifixion but freed by Resurrection. It makes none of the memories easier. But it means that we are no creatures of memory alone. We are Pentecost creatures born in the ashes.

None of what we see is easy. Nothing of what we remember is light. But we worship a God who took the royal road to the Cross and who carries all that we have that we may know that we are not trapped in the valley of the shadow of death but walk through it. We walk toward the light.

We make the journey carrying memories—but we make it with the sure and certain hope that we worship a God who does not promise to save us from hurt but who promises to save us from the premature death of being defined by hurt.

Even at the grave, we sing Alleluia. That’s the verdant solace of parched days.

May these harsh, parched scenes draw compassion from us and may they remind us that we walk with one who grieves, and promises that grief is not the end of the story.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert