"I stand alone at the hospital window looking down. Votive lamplights burn their nighttime vigil over a parking lot devoid of white horses and golden chariots, no gladiators or princes to ward off the phantom who silently glides out the back door, no hope of happily ever after. It’s just me and the parking lot, a gaping carless receptacle where earlier I could not find a single space to park my car. It now stands like the catacombs of old, mournfully vacant.
There is no life, no beckoning, no forward motion; only stillness and darkness that lingers. Oil spots anoint the parking spaces of healers and ministers.
A car passes on the road beyond, then three. A car turns into the vacant parking lot, then two. The car shifts, quivers, purrs, then stills. The headlights flicker and go dim.
Silent, reverent figures walk across the parking lot and enter beneath the moth-enshrouded lights. It is not a place one comes willingly, I know. These are not the family troubadours who have come to herald new babies into the family. Those will come later in the day. These visitors are the soldiers, the family warriors, who have come to cradle, cleanse, comfort, and console the body of Christ. They come to renew, refresh, and revive those who kept watch at Calvary.
In the whisper of a moment, life enters this house of suffering and death. Dry coffee grounds are scooped and poured. A coffee burner clicks. A hiss. A sigh. Morning incense wafts upward and steals outward into the hall to greet me.
A voice is heard down the hallway. The elevator beeps, lurches, rumbles. A slow grind announces its ascent and its sleepy eye welcomes the new arrivals. Everything, dead and silent only moments before, is now awakened and breathes a new day.
It’s the paschal mystery renewing itself once again."
Go here to read the rest: The Paschal Mystery Renewed
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