Happy Easter Monday!
Each year, I find myself holding my breath, waiting for that first glorious Alleluia at Easter Mass—the one we haven’t sung in over forty days. It’s like a deep exhale after a long journey. The lilies, the candlelight, the soaring music—it’s a full-body reawakening. And yet, even with the reality of Christ’s triumph over death burned into the fabric of our faith, that feeling can slip away so easily.
This Easter season, I have started the journey through the Hallow Easter Challenge, focused on Interior Freedom by Jacques Philippe. I can already tell that it will be a timely one. Philippe writes on the real root of Christian freedom—not freedom from suffering, but freedom within it. And that message landed especially deeply this year.
Maybe it was the Holy Thursday Mass that stirred something in me. My husband and I went to a liturgy where they had a Eucharistic procession outside of the Church to the place of repose accompanied by a Taizé-style meditation: “pray with me, remain with me.” These words echoed. They weren’t just Christ’s plea to the apostles in Gethsemane—they felt like a call to me in my own frantic life.
Philippe talks about the illusion of control being one of the major sources of our anxiety, and how true freedom is found not in controlling circumstances, but in surrendering to God’s presence within them. That’s been hitting home lately, especially in a world that feels like it constantly demands our attention, our urgency, our panic. The irony is that it’s in those moments of rush and distraction that I lose sight of the very victory we just celebrated on Easter: Christ has conquered death. What, then, shall we fear?
This Easter was also marked by the death of Pope Francis—a shepherd who led with humility and insisted on mercy over ideology. His death has reminded many of us of the fragility of life, and yet, that death does not have the final word.
So what does it mean to keep singing Alleluia—with our lives?
For me, it means remembering that freedom doesn’t come from perfect schedules, idealized Lent plans, or having a “quiet time” that finally feels profound. It comes in the quiet trust of the moment: a whispered “yes” in the chaos, a pause to be still, a heart that remains with Christ even when the world tries to pull it in a thousand directions.
As we move through the Easter season, maybe the real challenge—the real gift—is this: to remain. To carry that first Alleluia forward into ordinary time. To accept the kind of interior freedom that knows even death, even loss, even uncertainty cannot defeat us. Because He is risen. And that changes everything.