Preaching the word. Tremendous deeds. Delight. Unending joy. Eternal gladness.
Severe persecution. Trying to destroy the Church. Loud lament. Scattered.
Which of these words or phrases reverberates loudest in your heart? Now take that word or phrase and turn it over in your mind. Why this one, more than another?
Today’s readings and prayers juxtapose such radically contrary images and emotions, it would be tempting to banish one group from our hearts in favor of another. To cling to every taste of gladness and joy; to languish in fearful apprehension and sadness. Yet the Church’s liturgy holds them all together and asks us to do so as well. Why?
Look again at both sets of images. Together they describe the existential reality of the nascent church as it learns to bear the Paschal mystery of Jesus’ shocking, violent death—lament, persecution, scattering—and his miraculous, ineffable resurrection—delight, unending joy, eternal gladness.
It is not for us to try to wrest these realities apart. Like God at the dawn of creation, like Christ standing before the tomb of Lazarus, like a painter choosing from a palette awash in colors, we are called to delight in their mysterious, and sometimes fearful, admixture. The beautiful breaks through in the refraction of light through shadow.
Lord, there are so many disparate colors in a day! Help me to create something this day that brings gladness to You, to myself, to others. Something unexpected. Something beautiful.

Christopher Pramuk

Christopher Pramuk, author of Hope Sings, So Beautiful, is University Chair of Ignatian Thought and Imagination and associate professor of theology at Regis University in Denver, where he resides with his wife, Lauri, and their four children.