The Sweetest Easter

“For great is your love, reaching to the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the skies.” (Psalm 57:10) “I will praise you with the harp for your faithfulness, my God; I will sing praise to you with the lyre, Holy One of Israel.” (Psalm 71:22)
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Today marks the almost 2,000th Holy Friday since Jesus gave Himself up to be crucified for the salvation of all Jews and non-Jews (Gentiles). Today is the day we celebrate that He, though in excruciating anticipation, did the will of His Father. This year I really didn’t want to miss the opportunity to meditate on Him during Holy Week. To quietly walk through His journey by reading all about it in the Gospel of John. Yet there hasn't been anything quiet about this week. Earlier in the week we saw the furnace that was created within the Notre Dame. We saw the flames that threatened to completely destroy this Cathedral. As Ann Voskamp so beautifully put it, and yet we saw “A secular world still seeks the sacred.”

And as our family observed this, we also experienced a very sad night on the Wednesday of Holy Week. My younger sister’s two sweet little fur babies, attacked by a neighborhood dog, didn’t recover from the injuries. In a matter of hours both dogs were gone. It was tragic for my parents who had been caring for them the last year. It was tragic for my sister who had cared for her sweet dogs for the past 8 years. And it was sad for the sisters and cousins who grieved for her pain and loss and for the days that they will no longer be able to play with these sweet pups. And you realize life is so fragile. And it amazes me just how much room we have in our hearts to love on these companions and love them as our own. So, our hearts are broken today. And somehow I’m able to see the good in this bad narrative. That while our hearts grieve for the pain my parents and sister are living, can it not bring us that much more vulnerable and closer to the cross this Holy Friday. That though we are reminded how painful this life really is, we can all the more be filled with an enormous amount of gratitude at what our Savior did on that dark Thursday night.

That through sweat and tears He got up after praying to His Father the following: “Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will." (Matthew 26:39) His sweetest most obedient words “Yet not as I will, but as you will.” The words that led to His obedience, led Him to the cross. The laying down of Himself for all of us.

So today as you celebrate one more Holy Friday, may your aches and pains and disappointments and grieving make you that much more vulnerable to feeling His pain and receiving His gift of perfect, extravagant, precious love. Don’t fight the pain, the grieving or the loss. But let it catapult you into the sweetest Easter you have ever celebrated. Keep seeking the sacred. Keep seeking Jesus. 

Wishing you a heartfelt Holy Friday, 
​Damaris U. Avila