Easter 2026 Reflection: The Pascal Mystery and Practicing Resurrection

We are grateful for the gift of healing and renewed life we witness in our patients!

by Katie Dorner, Senior Director of Mission and Identity

As we observe Holy Week along with communities across Bolivia and Latin America, we are reminded that the Easter Triduum—the summit of the Catholic liturgical year—stands at the heart of our faith. Though the Easter Triduum is celebrated on three separate days, it is really a single liturgical moment divided into three: Holy Thursday in remembrance of the Last Supper, Good Friday in remembrance of the Lord's passion on the cross, and the Easter Mass in celebration of the Lord’s resurrection. 

Do these three parts matter for our lives and for our mission at Solidarity Bridge?  I would suggest they do tremendously.  Each of these moments in the Pascal Mystery cannot be separated from the other; they are integrally connected and remembering so might awaken hope anew within us. 

On Holy Thursday, service to others and humility are uplifted as Christ’s example to us.  As we hear how Christ washed his disciples’ feet, we are encouraged to express our faith by serving others.  We are invited to become ministers of accompaniment and stewards of self-giving love.  At Solidarity Bridge, we can call to mind the persistence of caregivers in Bolivia and Paraguay who travel long distances, holding onto hope in dire situations so that their children can receive complex heart surgery.  They have washed their children’s feet – literally and spiritually – in the lengths they have gone in search of healing for their children.

On Good Friday, we remember that Jesus takes on the suffering of the cross.  He falls, suffers, bleeds, and ultimately dies at the hand of injustice.  The Gospel recounts the faithfulness of women who were present to Jesus as he carried his cross and stood at the foot of the cross as he died.  They did not shy away from accompanying Jesus in his most painful and vulnerable moments.  We hold close so many stories of patients and their loved ones in Bolivia and Paraguay that move through the dark, unknown, and painful moments of their lives with faith.  Christ joins them and us all in our suffering.

 I have come to really treasure Holy Saturday, a day marked by liminal space.  Liturgically, it is the time between Good Friday and the Easter Vigil.  How much of life is perhaps in that kind of space: not in the acute pain of it all, yet still awaiting a joyful resolution?  Often our patients and their families wait in quiet faith like that which Holy Saturday requires.  We see this in loved ones waiting outside surgery rooms, not yet knowing if the surgery was successful.  We see it in patients who return the following year, hoping that this time, surgery will finally be safe to perform.  Waiting can be agonizing, but it can also be pregnant with surrender, possibility, and trust. 

When we finally arrive to the Easter Vigil, we rejoice that Christ is Risen!  We see in the passion, death, and rising of Christ that death does not have the final word, and that love conquers all pain.  It is the hope in which Christians everywhere anchor their lives. Christ is Risen! Alleluia! And one day we too, God willing, will rise with Jesus.  Until then, on our earthly pilgrimage, we receive glimpses of what we celebrate in the Pascal Mystery at work in our own lives: humble service, sacrificial love, hopeful waiting, and triumphant joy.

The writer Wendell Berry ends one of his beloved poems with the insistence: “Practice resurrection.”  Certainly, resurrection comes without any of our own efforts.  Resurrection, though, is also possible when we look for it, witness to it, and practice it.  At Solidarity Bridge, we witness resurrection in the lived faith of our patients and those who care for them with steadfastness.

Christ is Risen!  May we know that hope and live into that reality, embracing the invitation to practice resurrection this Easter season and always.