Although the sun had been up for more than an hour, the early morning April air remained chilly. Fifty U.S. Christians and Salvadoran refugees from around the city were huddled together against the cold for an Easter sunrise service in Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House. An Easter egg hunt on the White House's south lawn would be the only other evidence of Easter there that day.
The sunrise service was the culmination of Holy Week activities supporting the struggle of Christians in El Salvador. These had included prayer vigils in front of the White House and State Department and a call to fast and pray for our brothers and sisters in that tiny war-torn nation.
On Good Friday denominational leaders from across the country carried a cross through downtown streets with several hundred Christians following in procession. In the Catholic tradition of the "stations of the cross," stops were made at the Organization of American States, the World Bank, the State Department, and the White House. Each stop was accompanied by the reading of Scripture, prayer, and the citation of each organization's role in the Salvadoran conflict.
Our bilingual Easter morning service included songs of faith and hope written by Salvadoran peasants, prayers for the many suffering victims, and the recounting of the resurrection narrative. A moving celebration of the Eucharist was led by an exiled Salvadoran priest. U.S. Carmelite priest Peter Hinde delivered the homily.
Peter had recently returned from a gathering in Costa Rica of families and friends of Latin America's innumerable desaparecidos: the "disappeared," victims of sudden and surreptitious military arrest who were never seen nor heard from again and whose "crime" was to be suspected of siding against their government and for the poor.
Wives and husbands, sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers, close and dear friends of these desaparecidos had come together in Costa Rica from such countries as Chile, Guatemala, Argentina, El Salvador, and Paraguay. United in their common sorrow, they assembled to strengthen and encourage one another in the trials they faced daily.
Peter told us that, after several days, a saying grew among them, a phrase that these men and women used over and over again to describe their feelings. No hay pena inutil: There is no useless suffering.
There is no useless suffering. How forcefully those words spoke to me that morning, revealing a little more of the mystery of that first Easter morn. Here were people who had every reason for despair and anger at their loss: loved ones so suddenly and tragically taken, never to be given back. Yet the suffering that they felt so keenly they knew to be not a useless suffering, not a suffering in vain.
And in their suffering they knew the meaning of the resurrection far better than most of us. Certainly far better than I did; for in the midst of suffering they knew hope - not an abstract hope, not a theological construct, but a living hope that penetrated to the depths of their souls. So profoundly had they endured the sufferings of Christ; so richly did they now know his resurrected life.
As I began my walk back home, treasuring in my heart what those brothers and sisters had taught me that morning, I remembered the words of hope that a different Peter gave to another group of suffering "exiles" back in the first century:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy we hare been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and to an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while you may have to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold which though perishable is tested by fire, may redound to praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Without having seen him you lore him; though you do not now see him you believe in him and rejoice with unutterable and exalted joy. As the outcome of your faith you obtain the salvation of your souls. (1 Peter 1:3-9)
Joe Roos was publisher and managing editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.
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