This weekend we celebrate Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week. For Christians this is the week that defines the Christian life. In Holy Week we discover more deeply who, exactly, God is and what God’s dream is for the world. In Holy Week we discover more about humanity and the dynamics that are at work in human relationships. We celebrate Holy Week annually because these discoveries have depths that we still have not understood. The revelation of who God is and who we are called to be, as human beings, seems necessary to discover again and again, year by year, generation after generation.
The focus of Holy Week is the person of Jesus Christ and his life, death and resurrection. Christ is the centre of Holy Week because he both reveals God and shows us our humanity. He reveals God to us in his actions and words. On Palm Sunday he rides triumphantly into Jerusalem and is hailed as King. He rides not surrounded by cavalry and intent on claiming the city for his own. No. He rides on a donkey. The donkey is a symbol of meekness and lowliness. This annual symbolic entry of the King serves as a reminder that God enters our world in ways that are unpretentious, non-violent and lowly. If we are looking for God in the precision of military might or the spotlight of well-crafted party political persuasion, we will not find him. This does not seem to be the way of God. We are reminded of this each Holy Week. He enters our world in humility, unarmed and ready to serve.
Holy week then is identified with what we call the Easter Triduum or the three days that incorporate Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil. Each one of these three days continues to reveal more about God and humanity. Holy Thursday is the night of the Last Supper and the washing of the feet. Once more with our eyes fixed on the person of Jesus we will learn more about God. On Thursday, Jesus will reveal God as the one who is exemplified in acts of service. “I have given you an example,” he says. Just as I have washed your feet so you must do the same. The call to wash is universal and global. The feet to wash or those of the ones who are fleeing violence in Ukraine, as well as many other countries across the globe. Refugees continue to walk dusty roads of bomb broken bitumen, carrying little and hoping for much. Their feet cry out. The feet of refugees are joined by the feet of political prisoners, of trafficked women, of medically deprived sick, young and old, of the racially and religious vilified and of the ill and frail. The feet to wash are also of the hard hearted and those who are desensitised to the vulnerable and barefooted mass of humanity. Holy Thursday reveals the brokenness of humanity and the appeal to imitate the God whose name is compassion and love.
Good Friday, opens up even more about God. With eyes again fixed on Jesus we see what it looks like to entrust our lives into the hands of the God of life. “Father, I put my life in your hands” is the psalm that will be sung out across the Christians Churches around the globe. “I put my life in your hands”. Good Friday invites us to learn what it is to trust in someone who is beyond ourselves and who does not find our burdens and the burdens of the world too hard to take on and to transform. We are presented with the God who envelopes our sufferings and is already at work in raising them up. We discover that as human beings we cannot deliver ourselves and our world from the evil with which we are often confronted – whether it be the evil of war, the devastation of illness, the sorrow of death, the pain of broken relationships. We can hold then boldly, courageously and in faith, before the cross.
And at the Easter Vigil we will celebrate the God who breaks through the barriers of death and brings new life.
These days are rich in word and sacraments. To attentive hearts and minds Holy Week brings revelations, new and old, to our present.
You are invited to the Holy Week ceremonies this year. And you never know what new light the Lord might throw on your own life.
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Bruno Coniglio says:
What a thought provoking teaching based on an example that we can all easily relate to. More power to your discernment and communication skills.
Outstanding !!
Tony Santospirito says:
Looking for a meditation on the passion of Jesus I downloaded the Way of the Cross video. It was beautifully done and was exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for including it in the parish Good Friday liturgy bulletin