Holy Week came the last week of March. Maybe it was the giant snowdrifts towering over the sidewalks, or the lingering hurt over being left behind in a hosanna march, but I didn’t feel excitement for the long week of religious observance ahead. At our old Anglican church, Holy Week was a marathon of the faithful: we would parade on Palm Sunday, wash feet on Maundy Thursday, remember Jesus’ crucifixion on Good Friday, then stage a three-hour Easter Vigil on Saturday night, culminating in bells and shouts of resurrection (my favorite part by far). But by the time Sunday morning service rolled around, we were exhausted. It was too much church for one week, and I could barely muster up a hallelujah.
This year, my Holy Week celebration included a return to therapy. On Wednesday after Mass at the monastery, I drove to the suburbs to meet with the marriage counselor that Josh and I had been seeing during the previous year. It had been a few months since we had been to counseling as a couple, but I scheduled this appointment for myself without realizing what week it was. I wanted to talk about my “spiritual singleness” revelation and the nuns.
I sat on the futon in the counselor’s small office, taking sips of Tazo chai from a paper cup. After catching him up on the events of the last few months, I asked: “Is this whole quest a bit desperate?”
“No,” my counselor said, taking off his glasses to rub the spot between his eyes. “It sounds to me like going through the formation program at the monastery has been good for you.” I took another sip of black tea.
“What about spiritual singleness?” I asked him. “Did God speak to me in the woods or am I losing my mind?”
He laughed. “I can’t verify if God spoke to you. But I do think spiritual singleness can be a useful term. It’s a healthy form of self-differentiation in your marriage.”
Self-differentiation. That sounded important, so I wrote it down in my journal, which I had brought to the appointment, and circled it. Twice.
Later at home, when I googled the term, I read articles about people who have a strong sense of self: their priorities, their opinions, their boundaries firm and distinct from their loved ones. On a family therapy website, self-differentiation was described as “being able to have different opinions and values than your family members, but being able to stay emotionally connected to them.”
I wondered if that was part of my problem in the years since Josh left Christianity, when I struggled to follow Jesus and live out my faith’s upside-down principles without him. How could we stay emotionally connected while believing in and valuing different things?
There was no evening foot washing service at Calvary for Maundy Thursday, so I read the familiar stories about the Last Supper in Give Us This Day at home instead. In the gospel story of the upper room, Peter pleads with Jesus to wash “not just my feet but my hands and head as well!” Judas, the disciple who would go on to betray Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, also had his feet washed and dried by Jesus.
“What if Judas had . . . been able to forgive Jesus for not being the kind of savior he thought he should be?” wrote Rachelle Linner in the daily reflection from Give Us This Day. “Can we learn from what he couldn’t do and forgive others for not being what we want them to be?”
I set down the prayer book on the couch beside me and closed my eyes. Could I forgive Josh for not being a Christian? And could Josh forgive me for not changing with him?
“Hey, are you going to a service?” Josh asked. He was lying on the living room carpet, using a foam roller to loosen his quads after a long run. I had just gotten out of the shower and had my towel wrapped around me.
“Calvary doesn’t have one until seven, and that’s too late,” I said. “It’s already after three. I think the one at Ascension Catholic Church is starting now.”
“Go! You should go,” he said.
“Really?” I said, looking down at my towel, at my bare toes.
“Yes,” he said, throwing a balled-up sock at me from the floor. “The church is what, five minutes away? You have time. You should go.”
I dried my hair, threw on some clothes, and hopped in the car. Josh was right. It was just five minutes away.
I was still late, but not by much. I entered the back of the sanctuary and picked up a bulletin from a side table. The service was underway, and I scanned the program to try and find my place. The priest was leading the congregation through something called “The Solemn Intercessions.” I picked up the prayer book, leafed through it for a moment, then joined the congregation in standing and speaking aloud the written prayers.
But I blinked hard when I read the title of Solemn Intercession VII: For those who do not believe in God. There, in print, in a Catholic prayer book no less, was a prayer for Josh.
I joined the rumble of the congregation as we spoke the words, together: “Let us pray also for those who do not acknowledge God, that, following what is right in sincerity of heart, they may find the way to God himself.”
Following what is right in sincerity of heart, they may find the way to God.
I looked around the church at the stations of the cross, where vivid sculptures of Jesus’ crucifixion story circled the sanctuary. This solemn intercession, like Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, was a prayer of trust and relinquishment. I could pray that Josh search his heart for what is right, and that by doing so he might find his way to God. It was a gentle prayer and one I wasn’t praying alone. A whole congregation—the whole holy Catholic Church in Good Friday services around the world—was praying it with me.
Next, came a procession of the cross down the center aisle of the church. Incense swayed from side to side. The liturgy repeated the phrase: “Behold the wood of the Cross, on which hung the salvation of the world.” Men carried a heavy cross through the church, then laid it at the front of the sanctuary.
People began to walk forward to show their signs of reverence—kneeling, kissing the cross. I came forward too, giving the cross a quick peck on the cheek as it were, wondering if my lips were touching the same grains of wood as the people before me. The wood felt soft on my lips.
At home, when I cracked open my book on Salesian spirituality, I read a quote from Saint Francis de Sales: “To take up our cross and follow Jesus Christ means nothing other than receiving and accepting all the troubles, contradictions, afflictions and mortifications that come our way in life.”
Following Jesus means accepting all the troubles and contradictions? It’s a hard teaching, especially in a solution-oriented culture. But it was easier to kiss the face of the cross after asking God to bless the journey of those who don’t believe in God.
It was just another Saturday in late winter. The kids played dress up and bickered over who got to use the purple marker. Josh met up with friends to go for a long run, so I made breakfast for the kids on my own. When I felt bored, I looked at my phone or took pictures of the kids in their pajamas and texted them to our relatives far away. After lunch we got our taxes done and found out we owed over one thousand dollars to the state government. As the kids watched episodes of Ninjago on the iPad, I put on my boots and walked through the snow in the backyard just to breathe the cold air, to feel it circulate in my lungs. I wondered if the tulip bulbs had sprouted under the snow banks.
Easter Sunday fell on April Fools’ Day. On social media I saw a meme of Jesus re-appearing from the dead with a text bubble from his lips: “Gotcha!”
We hadn’t talked about it, but I assumed Josh was coming to church with me and the kids on Easter morning. But it turned out we were not on the same page. I got huffy and slammed a door. He was impatient and barked at the kids to hurry up and put on their shoes already. The kids felt our bad mood; Rowan threw his shoe across the room instead of putting it on, and Eliza walked over to touch my side, looking for some kind of reassurance.
We fought more on the drive to church. He was going too fast, weaving around slower drivers, and I told him he was going to give me a heart attack.
“You don’t have to come,” I told him when we pulled through the alley behind the church, even though we both knew it wasn’t true.
“I’m coming,” he said.
I looked at the towering church spire from the car window. It was built in 1884, and it had been sitting on this corner for over a century. A young family walked in the back door, the parents holding hands.
“I don’t even like this church,” I said, turning away, remembering the loneliness of Palm Sunday.
“What?” Eliza asked. “Mama, what did you say?”
“I didn’t mean that, I’m sorry,” I said immediately, my cheeks hot.
There were no parking spots, so Josh pulled through the alley to go around the block. He parallel parked and we got out of the car and walked two blocks, our boots trailing through slush. Inside, there was the sound of gospel music. I didn’t recognize the people we passed in the hallway. We first dropped the kids in the nursery, then entered the sanctuary together. It was the first time since Christmas Eve that Josh attended an entire service with me. I folded my arms as we walked side-by-side.
In the sermon, Pastor Jeff started by sharing an Easter in his past when he hadn’t understood the hope of this holiday. He said, “Yeah, so what, Jesus was raised from the dead, but that doesn’t change the reality out in the real world.” It was like the meme of Jesus playing a divine prank on April Fools’ and yelling “Gotcha!” after jumping from behind the tombstone.
He described his journey from that place of cynicism to one of wonder. He played a short video, the film projected on a white wall to the left of the pulpit. It was about the moon, the way it can evoke the feeling of mystery. It’s a wonder that all humans can share in. It was this shift into awe that saved his faith, he said. It was a new understanding that the Scriptures are like poetry, that they give us a story we can find ourselves in, that they point to something where we can find hope.
After the sermon was over, the associate pastor got up and introduced Communion. “This table,” she said, stretching her arms wide, “is a table for all of us. It’s not a table that belongs to religion, it’s not a table that belongs to the church. This table belongs to the Lord. All of you are welcome here.”
We were seated near the front of the church, and I moved to stand up and join the line of people filing forward to tear off a piece of bread and dip it in the chalice. Josh moved behind me. He was following me to the altar.
“Are you sure?” I whispered to him, incredulous.
“She said everyone is welcome, didn’t she?” he said.
I smiled. Maybe I did like this church.
When Josh first stopped coming to church with me, I felt it most strongly when I took Communion alone. Communion is a sign of the unity of the church and, at our wedding, Josh and I had served the sacrament together to our family and friends. But since he deconverted, Josh no longer ate the bread nor drank from the common cup; he was outside the body of Christ. The old metaphors of two becoming one flesh in marriage felt at stake. Were we still “one” in our union? How did we understand our commitment, our community now?
Most Christian teaching is clear that only professed believers should take Communion, and plenty of churches deny the sacrament to those outside their denomination. I am sure I have unknowingly broken rules myself as a baptized Presbyterian by receiving Communion in a variety of churches over the years. The underlying theology is important; my reforming ancestors—Lutherans, Mennonites, and the like—endured persecution for different understandings of the sacraments. But even if I understand this intellectually, I could weep in gratitude for the associate pastor’s open invitation. “Take, eat,” she had said. “This is Christ’s body, broken for you.”
Jesus ate regularly with outsiders. When he caught flack for doing so, he replied: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Later I asked Josh about taking Communion on Easter. He repeated that he had felt welcomed to join this spiritual practice because of the associate pastor’s words. He didn’t say it, but I wondered if he also took Communion for me—to support me by joining in this mystical ritual, to show me I am not alone.
I don’t understand it. But I feel a prickling of hope—not for Josh’s conversion back to faith, exactly, but that he, too, might be hungry for a taste of God’s goodness.