Spending Easter alone

I think everyone who believes or thinks they believe or who may believe, should spend at least one Easter alone.

I am struck by how much of Jesus’ life was spent alone. Right from the start. He’s baptized by John the Baptist and then immediately heads to the desert to spend 40 days thinking and fasting—alone. That is followed by a series of temptations by the devil himself that do not succeed. From this encounter come two famous phrases, “Man does not live by bread alone” and “Get thee behind me, Satan.”

Jesus proceeds to round up his twelve apostles, the first being brothers Peter and Andrew, fishermen both. He then begins preaching and making miracles, curing people of leprosy and palsy, casting out devils, not to mention raising the dead. There follows the Sermon in the Mount and other familiar events.

Then he’s betrayed by Judas and is turned over to the authorities who find him to be a dangerous rabble-rouser. Pilate questions him, and, except for one brief response, Jesus is silent.

And he’s alone. There’s no one there to defend him, to counsel him, to simply be there with him. No one standing beside him. These last hours are one of a man completely alone. He was mocked, spit upon. All those people who marveled at his miracles and were so taken by his teachings—not there. The crowd that is there is hostile; they cry for the release of the thief Barabbas and demand that Jesus be crucified. Pilate literally washes his hands of it all, and Jesus is, as well all know, crucified.

Even dying, he calls out that he has been forsaken by his father, left by himself.

Many people fixate on what must have been an agonizing death, but I always felt the extreme loneliness of Jesus’ final hours. The agony of being utterly alone in his suffering.

One Easter, I was in France. That would seem to be not a bad place to be, and it surely was not. But I was alone and lonely, and when Easter came around, I felt a kind of kinship to that weekend, and especially to Good Friday, that I wouldn’t have felt in a communal situation, paradoxical as that may seem. My aloneness was mirrored by Jesus’. It was embraced.

We are all alone at one time or another in our lives. Sometimes, that is fine, but on other occasions, it’s very hard to bear. We’re alone and we’re lonely, and that can be a strong, forlorn ache. To be totally alone. No one to have our back, to take our part. My aloneness gave me a deeper understanding of Jesus’ trials. I felt closer to him. Spending Easter alone widened my perspective on what happened to him.

Today, Good Friday, I think about my poor cousin, in a hospital room, plagued by demons, afraid and trembling and feeling hopeless. Family visit her, console her, do all they can, but she is hours from home, and, mostly, with strangers. I think about her. I want her to feel she’s not alone.