Everything Becomes A Door

What the Resurrection of Jesus promises is that things can always be new again. It is never too late to begin anew. No sin is unforgiven. No betrayal is final. Grief, anger and bitterness can give way to surprise, good humor and delight. Every form of death can be overcome. Norbertine priest and poet Francis Dorff captures what resurrection might mean for us today in his poem Everything Becomes A Door:

We’ll know we have been raised from the dead
when everything becomes a door—
every brick wall,
every dead end,
every Judas friend,
everything we see and smell and taste,
everything we think and feel and are,
every mountain top and valley bottom,
every birth and every death,
every joy and every pain,
every ecstasy and, infidelity—
when every single thing
becomes a door
that opens to eternity
and we pass through
as we could never do
before.
And then we’ll wonder why
we’ve spent so many years
just stopping at these doors;
why we’ve always pulled up short,
and turned around,
and walked away,
instead of passing through.

In the resurrection there are no doors that are eternally closed to us – God always opens another. The Resurrection assures us that God never gives up on us, even if we give up on ourselves. God writes straight with the crooked lines of our lives. God promises new life to all, and we can trust St. Julian of Norwich when she says that “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well,” including in our own lives.

The challenge of believing in the Resurrection is not just to believe that Jesus rose from the dead, but that the new life his Resurrection promises is intended for us and for all aspects of our lives and our world.

On behalf of Fr. Jerry, Fr. John, Fr. Paul, Deacon Eddy and the entire Pastoral staff, I wish you and yours all the peace and joy and open doors of Easter.

Buona Pasqua!
Fr. Greg