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The
week of the cross begins on Palm Sunday
PRAISED BE JESUS
CHRIST!
(Now and Forever)
Holy Week stands before us in all its power and mystery. It is a week of
the cross. The cross more than any other image captures what will unfold
in the life of Christ and what those events mean for Catholics and the
world. Each of us is summoned to gaze upon the cross and let its power
work on us.
His life, from the start, was destined to end in Jerusalem. From the
moment Herod tried to kill him at his birth and the Herodians plotted
his murder after his first miracle, Jesus was shadowed by the cross.
This week (Holy Week) he will meet it face to face. We are urged to
travel the days of Holy Week with him. We are invited to climb the hill
of Calvary, stand beneath the cross and await his resurrection.
In the cross there is a sense of how far God’s love will take him. The
death of Jesus witnesses the implications of perfect and unconditional
love. He loves us even unto death. That is the lesson of the cross and
it is a lesson that is the foundation of our hope. There is nothing
stronger than God’s love for us: not our betrayals, our sinfulness, our
selfishness, or even the horrible evil that so often seems to control
the world in which we live. It is the love that stops at nothing to give
us life.
In the Passion of Jesus read on Palm Sunday and Good Friday, we glimpse
at length the depth of God’s love. Jesus is the love of God made flesh.
In Jesus, God hands himself over to those whose infidelity requires his
death. In him the cross of God’s unconditional commitment to us is
proclaimed. The “scandal” of the cross is that the love killed is the
love that saves.
Death didn’t fall upon Jesus and take him away against his will. It was
his choice, his desire to face the Father’s will nose to nose, come what
may. He allowed himself to be nailed to the wood to usher in a new age
where the wolf would lay down with the lamb and the little child would
play at the adder’s lair (second Sunday of Advent Isaiah reading).
The Garden of Gethsemane sits at the foot of the Mount of Olives, near
the head of the Kidron Valley. It is a tiny oasis of green and brown
land. The Mount of Olives nearby is a great cemetery, with gravestones
packed one on the other. The entire hill is like this from bottom to
top, with Jewish graves at the top and a mausoleum at the bottom.
According to Jewish legend, the Messiah will appear first at Bethpage at
the very top of the mountain and the first people to rise will be the
Jews buried there.
At the time of Jesus, there were no graves on the mountain. It was an
olive orchard and it was the place where people from all over Israel
pitched their tents during Passover. As the holy days approached, the
mountain be-came a vast tent city filled with pilgrims from up and down
the countryside. To get to the temple, all they had to do was walk down
the mountain to the valley and up Mount Moriah on the other side.
The tent city on the Mount of Olives would have been filled with Jesus’
admirers. They were the country people, many from Galilee, some even
from the Negev desert. There were the poor people who worked the land
and beat copper and fished in the sea. They were the people who had seen
his miracles and heard his preaching, who had come to believe that he
was indeed the Messiah.
On the other side of the valley was Jerusalem, where Jesus’ enemies
lived. Here were the Romans and their governmental surrogates, the high
priest and his court, the Sanhedrin and the other leaders of Israel.
The world of Jesus was divided into halves. The narrow Kidron Valley lay
between those two halves. With Jesus there would always be refuge on the
Mount of Olives and just beyond that in Bethany. Mary, Martha and
Lazarus were from Bethany. It was at Bethany that Jesus had worked his
most spectacular miracle. He brought Lazarus back from the grave even
though the man had been dead for at least three days. It was from
Bethany that Jesus and his apostles set out for his triumphant entry
into Jerusalem. In the week preceding his Passion, Jesus spent his
nights in Bethany while his days were spent preaching in Jerusalem.
Jerusalem would be the scene of his death. On Holy Thursday, he could
have left the garden and, mingling with the crowd on the mountain,
disappeared into it. He could have easily reached Bethany from there,
and after that there would be nothing but open desert where his enemies
could never find him. If he stayed, he would die. All he had to do to
escape that death was climb up the Mount of Olives on paths he had
traveled many times and knew well. He could be faithful to his mission
or he could turn his back and escape. Death was his choice.
One point of meditation during Holy Week is whether we pretend that
death will never come. If we do, we will likely live out our days in
vain pursuits, letting death catch us unawares. On the other hand, we
can grapple with it nose to nose and live a life of faith.
During Holy Week, Jesus Christ calls us to a super-charged life, one
where we live in the knowledge that each moment will never come again,
aware that the predominant theme of our lives can be an attitude of
gratitude to God for his many blessings, not the least of which is our
salvation by Jesus Christ.
In the end, Holy Week challenges us to abandon mediocre spirituality, to
take what happened to Jesus during Holy Week more seriously, and to make
the renewal of our baptismal promises on Easter a faith-driven moment
when we say to God: Here I am Lord. I am determined to do your will.
Strengthen my faith. Open my eyes to your presence in my life. Help me
as I struggle to open my heart totally to the gifts of your Holy Spirit.
Except for the Chrism Mass celebrated at the cathedral on Tuesday
evening of Holy Week, the Masses through Wednesday of Holy Week are of
normal length. During the Sacred Triduum (Holy Thursday, Good Friday and
the Easter Vigil), the services are lengthy. But, it is powerful
liturgy.
The institution of the Mass, the priesthood and the call to serve one
another is celebrated in the washing of feet and the Mass of the Lord’s
Supper on Holy Thursday. On Good Friday, we venerate the cross and
follow Jesus to Calvary where we stand beneath his cross and hear his
words: “Father, forgive them.” We vigil at his tomb and rejoice in his
resurrection Holy Saturday night. These are liturgies every Catholic
should make supreme effort to attend. They are not days of obligation,
but they are our high holy days. As we follow Jesus during these days,
let us pray for true conversion. |
