Broken Locks

Savoring Easter: Jesus Appears to the Apostles in the Locked Room

Our daughter’s room had no doorknob. We went through a phase where she locked herself in her room over and over again. She knew how to lock the door but not how to let herself out. One time she locked herself in a room at a friend’s house and someone was preparing to climb through a second floor window to get to her. Luckily she figured out how to unlock the door before drastic measures were taken. The result: no more doorknobs.  

How often have I locked myself in a prison of my own making? I shut the door on hope and seal it tight with fear, grief, and insecurity.  That is precisely what the disciples have done in John’s Gospel. In their despair over Christ’s death, they have locked themselves away to grieve and to hide as they could not see a way forward. Jesus appeared to them in John 20:19-21.

Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 

Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

The disciples, like many of us, locked the door on new possibilities to follow Christ. I think of my daughter frantic on one side of the door and me frantic on the other. She knows I am here, but cannot see a way out. 

In addition to the disciples in the Gospels, the Communion of Saints gives us countless examples of individuals who witness to the resurrection in their own realities. When they encounter locked doors, God breaks through the locks.  For me, St. Julie Billiart has been a model through both her personal story and her leadership in the Church.  She was influenced by the Jesuits during their suppression in 18th century Europe (where they worked underground as the Fathers of the Faith). Like so many other apostolic women’s congregations, she and her sisters were formed in Ignatian spiritual and organizational principles. Using these tools, they lived and ministered in places where the Jesuits could not serve openly during the French Revolution. From an institutional death in the Society of Jesus, new ways of being Ignatian emerged. God took one locked door and revealed new opportunities. 

St. Julie’s personal transformation is also a resurrection story. For 22 years, including during the time when she founded her congregation, she was crippled. Her spiritual director advised her to devote herself to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. After her miraculous cure, she spent the next phase of her life walking all over France and Belgium teaching and founding new communities. As a result of her unexpected physical cure, she was able to spread the Gospel in ways she never imagined. My little relic of St. Julie Billiart has been a reminder that God opens locked doors, cures broken bodies, and brings hope where there appeared to be none. 

Many years after I received this precious gift, I asked the Sister who gave it to me if she wanted it back. I always believed she gave it to me in the hope that I would one day join the community and a part of me felt that this gift was not really mine to keep. So one day, I came up with a way to broach the subject.  I was prepared for whatever she wanted me to do. In her own way, she assured me of my own worth and my vocation in the spirit of St. Julie. Maybe she really did hope for a different outcome for my vocation, but she and the other Sisters have supported my journey every step of the way. Instead of reminding me of a “no” to religious life, this piece of St. Julie reminds me of God’s creative fidelity in me. 

When the angel of the Lord breaks through locked doors, the disciples are freed and sent back to their work. I imagine a middle-aged Julie, crippled and in great pain, released from the prison that her body had become. I see the suppressed Society of Jesus being given new hope. I see Churches with empty pews awaiting new possibilities. 

And where am I? What door is God opening for me? 

Will I greet these new possibilities with renewed hope? 

Can I see these broken locks as a witness to God’s unfailing promises? 

Going Deeper 

Pray the Anima Christi Prayer

Learn more about St. Julie Billiart and the suppression of the Jesuits in Europe 

Photo by Jan Tinneberg on Unsplash