Easter Evening
by Carl Mazza
Any Spring day can end as beautifully as it begins, with the same fresh air of awareness and a bond with the innocent essentials of being. The morning of such a day is bright, quiet, and alive. Yet, just as much is the evening, with its deeper shadows and longings, as exciting as dawn in its possibilities. There is, in this latter time, a chance to look back - to remember and realize.

The morning of Jesus' resurrection was an amazing flash of chaos and discovery. Suddenly, astonishingly, Jesus was back. He who had been dead, was now again alive. When we think of Easter, we can't help but be charmed to that great dawn.

Yet, the fantastic day came to an end as well. What then of Easter evening? In the long shadows of dusk, amid the gentle peace of twilight, perhaps there was a moment for conversation among those bewildered friends of Jesus. What, indeed, had happened? What to make of the most startling sunrise of any and all time?

One day this past winter at Clairvaux Farm a three-year-old girl came up to me and shyly asked if I would button her coat. Even her youth could not overcome the cold wind which was whipping all around us that day. For such requests, we readily put everything aside - no task in the world can seem as important. Yet, as quickly as it took to bend down, I realized that her coat had no buttons. In that same instant I at last heard that for what she had really asked. There would be no quick fix - her desire was more than buttons. She needed, and so graciously was willing to ask for, the touch of human care. It was her very soul which yearned to be buttoned.

It was not that her parents didn't care. Struggling with homeless- ness, they had only so much to give at that time, and the rest of what the children needed was to left for their forage. How many of the lambs of God are so left alone in the world? Homelessness is not only the absence of a roof, as important as that shelter is for all human survival. We also need to know that we really matter, that the universe itself is our home, and that we are constantly and dearly cared for.

By chance, later that same day, I had a long conversation with a newcomer at the Community Kitchen, a grandmother who was living in her car. She got to our place of warmth and good food through the help of another homeless person who had befriended her. She spoke quietly, yet with much feeling, of the flood that had destroyed her once secure home. This was followed by even more disastrous intervention of her well-meaning, yet condescending family - and their eventual rejection of each others help. Thus began her period of wandering, growing isolation, and the mounting danger of exposure to a very cold season and most unfriendly world. One of the sheer joys of our work at Meeting Ground is the ready opportunity to offer help in such a situation. We did, and it was graciously accepted.

Those two encounters were much food for thought, and I still think hard on their meaning. Two persons, each at one full end of the spectrum of life. Two individuals with such widely differing experience, yet so very much the same. Each one yearning for the fastening of buttons against the frightful elements of life. I have wondered what the friends of Jesus were thinking as they sat together on the evening of Easter. As the initial shock of resurrection permeated their lives and sensibilities, what would they now do? Of all the conversations in human history at which I wish I had been present, that one would have been the highest on my list. They had, after all, just about given up. Some had already returned to the old work of fishing - others wondered if they would ever come out of hiding. There was plenty of fear, loneliness, uncertainly, and shattering of faith.

Now, suddenly - the return of confidence, belief, promise, and a future. The one question on that momentous evening had to be: Now, what do we do!? As dazzling as the resurrection itself was their renewed possibility of great and daring accomplishment.

The whole world had, in an instant, flipped over, even as incredulous, swimming eyes stared into the dark recess of an empty tomb at first light on a brilliant Spring morning. The resurrection was dazzling in its power. Yet, in itself, it did little to change the world. What really mattered, and what altered the course of human history, was the renewal of zeal among the friends of Jesus.
What was born again that Easter day was the call to action, to work for Good in the world. Countless million seeds of calling were sown in the imagination and dreams that sprung wild in the converted hearts and conversations of Easter evening.

In the days, months, and years which followed, how many loves have been rekindled, how many buttons fastened and restored as a result of the realizations of that amazing day? The greater miracle may not even have been the resurrection itself. Rather, it may be found in the strong, unending works of ordinary people - in knowing how much they are truly loved - striving hard every day in ways great and small to make real on earth the very community of heaven.

At Easter dawn, the morning stars sang together, and the light of that music was blinding. But on Easter evening, cooler heads, yet still racing hearts, fully knew they would never again be the same. In their quiet selves they recognized that they were being called to a new life of grateful and hopeful action in a winter world. Even as night settled, they knew - at the first light they would open their door wide, roll up their sleeves in the warm rays of a new, more ordinary morning, and set to work. And their inspired actions would change the world, forever.