Filed by Chelsea at 11:21 pm under Catholicism, Religion, Social Issues

Tonight is the night of Easter Vigil.
The Holiest Night of the Year.
While Christmas may get the most attention and inspire warm fuzzies and gift-giving frenzies all over the world, even in people who have no idea what’s actually being commemorated, Easter is actually the biggest deal in the religious world. Everybody has a birthday. Not everybody rises from the dead.

I’ve just been to a three-hour Easter Vigil mass and I feel great!
I feel enlivened.
I feel I have a clean heart.

It’s the start of a new Liturgical Year and I’m getting into the renewal spirit by taking a deep breath and a step back to access the state of my life. I’m not the best Catholic on the planet, that’s for sure and certain. But whatever else I am, however else I style myself, I AM A CATHOLIC. It’s what I was born to and what I keep straying from, and choosing again, and straying from, and choosing again. Maybe for some people it’s an easy and narrow path to walk for a lifetime, but I feel that for most of us it’s more of a struggle. But if you get eternal paradise in the end and you reach out to help others along the way, I guess it’s a struggle that’s worth my time and effort.

I should point out that I go to a completely awesome and progressive Catholic church here in Chicago, Saint Gertrude. The first Sunday I happened in, over a year and a half ago, I saw a woman give the homily who was obviously a lesbian. She talked about stewardship of the earth and taking political responsibility for the state our country’s in, and ending the war in Iraq. She then retook her seat at the front of the church and held hands with her partner. I’ve been sold ever since. Tonight’s vigil did not disappoint. The first hour or so of the mass was lit by candles and filled with singing and incense. Then the lights were turned on and the flutes and organ struck up to symbolize the Resurrection and the end of Lent. Father Grassi gave a homily in which he quoted “the great Canadian poet and mystic Leonard Cohen” (because Catholics are the hippest religion on the block) and talked about what we should doing to end the war that’s happening half a world away, and the wars that happen just down the block. Easter Vigil mass is also the one night of the year that adults are baptized, confirmed, and anointed into the Catholic church. Some of them cried. We all sang and extended our hands in blessing over them; the entire faith community inducts neophytes, not just the priest. Then there was much singing and praying and holding hands and giving peace and receiving communion, and then we each got a flower and wandered over to the church hall for food and to welcome the new members.

I never cry in real life.
I cried twice tonight.
It was a combination of things. I miss my family so much at holidays; the smell of incense reminds me of dozing in my parents’ laps during long Easter Vigils in Louisiana. But whenever I am at a Catholic mass, especially at St. Gert’s, I do feel at home. I look around the pews and see gay couples and interracial couples and families with children adopted from different countries and I feel, like millions of people across 2000 years of human history have felt, that as long as I am Catholic I will never be alone and I will never be unloved. So I had a mix of longing and belonging that was very hard on my tear ducts.

I also really really wished that I had had someone to share it all with. I felt this wave of personal loneliness at the fact that I had arrived and would be leaving alone. I have not one Catholic friend my age; well, not one that would be willing to go to mass with me. It was such a special and heartfelt night, and I had no one share it with. I guess this is how some people feel on Valentine’s Day; I didn’t so much care on February 14th. But I felt it tonight. I just wish there were one person, of all the people I know in Chicago, who would go to mass with me.

It’s not that I don’t know the horrible parts of the history of the Catholic Church.
It’s not that I don’t know that there are people who call themselves Catholic who are just horrible to others today.
And it’s not that I never have my doubts, and I certainly have my problems.
But the older I get and the more I see and learn, the more I want to have someone to thank.
I have an unshakeable feeling that I can be something bigger than myself, that there is an unseen hand guiding the hands around the clock, and I want to be part of it. I want some resurrection for myself. I want to be extraordinary.

I hope that this night of rebirth and rejoicing finds you in the bosom of those you hold dear.

Dona Nobis Pacem.