Bridget Bowles is a third-year undergraduate student at the University of St. Michael’s College majoring in English and Christianity and Culture. Bridget works as a Student Campus Minister as part of the St. Mike’s Campus Ministry team, where she is proud to serve the spiritual needs of the entire St. Mike’s student body.
For me, university Easters have felt disjointed. With Holy Week falling in the middle of the exam period, the Triduum liturgies can feel like just another obligation after a long day of studying, and Easter Sunday with my family as a tentative afternoon of rest in between finals. The last three years, I have found myself attending the Triduum in a pew next to my backpack on my way from and towards hours of work at the library. The sense of celebration I want to feel at Christ’s resurrection becomes fleeting in a time of such stress. At Mass and at dinner with my family, I find myself thinking about a seemingly endless checklist of essays and exams. On the one hand, I feel guilty for not being fully present in such important moments, and on the other, I feel another guilt for spending so many precious hours away from my work at the busiest time of the year. From this guilt, a temptation arises for me to hyper-fixate on the suffering of Christ’s death on the cross over the triumph of His resurrection.
The temptation begins with how I see my own suffering reflected in that of Christ, but because I do not know what to do with my own guilt and stress, I cannot move on from it. Of course, the particularly minute– and it really is minute– suffering of students in the exam period is not the only reason that many of us feel this temptation to fixate on the pain of the crucifixion. We also see the greater sufferings of our own lives and of the world we live in reflected in Jesus’ suffering, and, again, not knowing what to do with such pain, we wish to remain stuck on Good Friday, never getting to Easter Sunday.
One way I have come to understand this phenomenon is through the relationship of Dante’s Inferno to the rest of his Divine Comedy. Generally speaking, most people, if they have read any part of the Divine Comedy at all, have only read Inferno. Pop culture loves the images of Hell and the outlandish suffering that Dante describes, and thus, there is a tendency to think of Inferno as entirely encompassing of Dante’s work, and yet there is still Purgatorio and then Paradiso. I led a reading group throughout this past academic year that was reading Inferno. At times, its suffering is fascinating; at others, it is difficult to comprehend. I first noticed a dissatisfaction developing from my tendency to hyper-fixate on suffering as I found myself at several points this past semester exhausted by Hell and ready to rush to the summit of Mount Purgatory. However, as Dante says, “the path to Paradise begins in Hell.” My reading group grappled with the duality of reading Inferno as both a necessity to understanding Purgatorio and Paradiso and also as one leg of a greater journey (an important leg, sure, but still only one aspect of the greater whole). I believe the same logic of how one should read Inferno in relation to the rest of the Divine Comedy can also be applied to how we feel about Good Friday in relation to the Easter Triduum or to how we feel about disjointed university Easters and the duality of both great stress and great celebration occurring at the same time in our lives. Jesus’ suffering is not only an experience of great agony but also a loving sacrifice. Yes, he is experiencing this very personal moment of intense physical pain, but he is experiencing such pain for the salvation of all humanity. He cries out, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” but also, as we hear this year in Luke’s gospel, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise,” and “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” These two experiences of Jesus on the cross are simultaneous and undifferentiated. His death is both suffering and redemption. To understand the place of the Triduum in our lives, we have to remember that, through Christ, there is always a hope for this same redemption in our own suffering. We want to hyper-fixate on suffering because we think that our fixation will allow us to know what “to do” with our pain (somehow, this seems easier than having hope), but we do not need to “know.” We need only to hope– to trust. For Catholics, Easter 2025 is particularly important because it is in a jubilee year. Pope Francis has declared the theme for this jubilee year to be “Pilgrims of Hope.” This Easter, in particular, we are being invited to reflect on the hope of Christ’s death and resurrection. Like Dante, our pilgrimage is one that need only traverse Hell to reach Paradise.
Inspired by Pope Francis and the jubilee year, my word of the year has been hope. Hope is not easy to have but keeping it as a persistent little voice in the back of my head has changed my outlook this Easter season. I am still stressed out and overwhelmed by essays and exams, but I am excited for Easter in a way I have not been in the last two years. My essays and exams will be written in due time, and I will take pleasure in celebrating in the hope to be found in Christ’s resurrection with my family, friends, and the entire St. Mike’s community. I will allow the realities of both suffering and celebration to be true just as they are, and I invite you all to do the same.
Read other InsightOut posts.