Easter is more than one day on our liturgical calendar, and itinerant missionary, speaker and author Meg Hunter-Kilmer joins the show to reflect on living out the season’s joy despite challenging times.
Meg describes her experiences of living on the road and shares, “I am really grateful for just how much fruit I’m able to see in my life…I’m about to be 40, I’m single, and I don’t have any children. That can be a really heavy thing, especially as a woman. But I’m able to see so much fruit that comes, not just from the work that I have space for because I’m single and childless, but specifically [from] the woundedness. The way that’s drawn me into the pierced heart of Jesus, the way that I’m able to love people, has borne so much fruit.”
She continues, “It’s just such a gift that I’m meeting new people, I’m encountering new people in their brokenness, and I’m [hearing] Jesus say, ‘None of this is an accident. This might not be the life that you planned or the life that you would choose. But I’m doing something transformative in you and other people through your willingness to embrace me in this.’”
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As Meg traveled to different parishes throughout Holy Week, she recalls an experience that shifted her perspective. “I went to make my Holy Hour on Holy Thursday afternoon, but the tabernacle was already empty and the doors to the church were locked. And I’d been talking to someone who was just really, really suffering in the wake of the report of clerical abuse that came out of Maryland on Wednesday. I’ve been sort of walking [through] that with her,” she explains. “I looked at this empty tabernacle and at this locked church, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is where Jesus wants me right now. He wants me sitting, locked out of the church in a place where I have encountered him before and now he’s gone.’”
“So my whole Triduum was really about survivors of clerical abuse, about people who have been excluded from the church because of race, sexuality, gender identity, politics or vaccine issues. These different reasons that people feel so wounded, so excluded, they feel so distant. I really tend to hold a lot of this grief for people because I’m a safe person to talk to, because you never have to see me again,” Meg continues.
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She returned to this chapel on Easter Sunday, but this tabernacle was still empty. She notes, “There was a sign up for the children’s liturgy that said, ‘This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad.’ And it was right next to an empty tabernacle. So just sitting in that reality that it’s Easter, but some people are still in Good Friday, some people are still in Holy Saturday. Figuring out the way to balance the joy of the risen Lord with the fact that some people are still sitting outside sealed tombs with their loved ones rotting inside. It’s just been heavy and really beautiful.”