Giovanni Francesco Romanelli, "St. John and St. Peter at Christ's Tomb" (detail), 1640. © Los Angeles County Museum of Art

A mother at the Easter Triduum

Eight years after graduating, Anna was able to follow the Good Friday gesture for CL university students. "Even as a wife and mother, I need a Father to follow."

Thanks to my husband's willingness to take the kids for a walk in the park, I was able to participate in the Good Friday gesture for CL university students. I graduated from university eight years ago now, so it was like immersing myself again in that beautiful and familiar gesture. I was moved right away and invaded by a great gratitude. I had to acknowledge again how the movement is that place, that home, that makes me of the Church and of God. Even though I am a wife and mother, this does not diminish the fact that I am a daughter and therefore I always need a Father to follow. For me, the movement is a place and faces through which I can welcome the continual invitation to answer the question: "Do you love me?" All the gestures that I am presented with serve only to answer to this. I hung this sentence, taken from a meeting, in my kitchen: "Our problem is not whether we meet to talk about Him, organizing our encounters or gestures, but if there is anybody among us who is still magnetized by Him, who has let themselves be seized into the core by Him, so as not to end up in nothingness.”

Read also - The voice of the movement in Dutch

Being a mother, and having much less time for myself, has purified me a lot in understanding that the movement is not about participating in gestures, but is the place of the continuous relationship of faith between me and the Lord. This has led me, over time, to realize that I am beginning to love the people I meet and myself more and more. I was moved by following the Good Friday gesture because it is encountering Him, it is becoming more of a friend to Him.

Last but not least, what a surprise it is to realize that God has always sustained me, regardless of my various betrayals, in not abandoning this path.

Anna