Here we are once again gathering within these walls
and we do so at the beginning of Holy Week,
the most sacred time of the year for us,
who call ourselves by the Name of Christ.
I invite you to participate deeply in the liturgies of this week,
to let your hearts be open to the full scope of meaning
for the events of this week,
to follow Jesus as faithful disciples.
I make this invitation,
and then I realize that I have asked you to open your hearts
to the Passion Account of our Lord’s death,
a story full of intense suffering.
We may not feel at all up for exposure to such suffering.
We may have had about all we can handle this last year,
the deaths,
the funerals put on hold,
the unknowns,
the fear and anxiety
that when suppressed gets expressed in anger and grief.
To listen to the Passion according to Mark
brings all this suffering before us again.
And if that were not enough,
each of us here has most probably known times
of intense personal suffering.
For many people being consciously present with suffering,
unresolved from the past, is most difficult.
Yet I will still make this invitation to be present with an open heart
to this Gospel and to all the liturgies of Holy Week.
The reason is not to exacerbate
the suffering you may encounter or be experiencing,
but to discover in the midst of it all the most profound love,
love that moves us through the narrow constraints and pressures of pain
and out into an expansive space that is all freedom and joy.
Unless we go through the narrows of facing the suffering
we will forever be stuck there, just sort of holding
our grief or woundedness or sorrow or hopelessness at bay,
never fully free to experience the expansiveness
of healing and transformation which brings us true joy.
But by being willing to look at the hard words of the Passion Account
full in the face,
and as much as lies within us to be conscious of what we see,
then what our eyes will see is love, great love, all love, profoundest love.
Brothers and sisters, this story of Jesus’ death is not a tragic account
of suffering beyond all measure.
Jesus knew what he was doing;
he knew that what he was doing was essential,
all in service for you, for me, for every living being,
the way for all to come into Resurrection Life,
to finally get what he had been talking about all along,
what all his ministry had been about.
I guarantee to you that if you come and take part
in all these liturgies of Holy Week,
or as many of them as you can,
with a willingness and trust to bring all your own suffering with you,
that Love of God, which is God, will be at work in you,
transforming the wounds,
bringing healing,
revealing to you such beauty.
Holy Week – the most sacred time of the whole year,
focused in our deepest emotions and most profound pain,
the time when we can be together
in holding all our suffering
and all the suffering of the world
in the context of the Love of Jesus played out to its full extent.
Is that not what draws your hearts in deepest devotion,
wonder, love and awe?
Let your participation this week
be nothing less than responding in faith,
trusting wholly in what Jesus did for us,
surrendering to the completeness of what he did
that does not need any additional action on our part
other than to receive.
In our devotional response to Jesus
there is no self aggrandizement,
no need to prove a point or make a statement,
no status attained for having participated in all the worship of the week,
just humble acceptance and the expression of our hearts.
What better use of our time this week
for those who are Christians, who are followers of Jesus,
than to show our devotion to the One who not only died for us
but continues to take care of us, nurture us, feed us with himself,
to show our devotion through our worship
especially at each of the liturgies of the Triduum,
Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil Saturday night,
the three most holy days of the whole Church Year.
And this is what we can best do
in response to what the liturgies of this week represent:
to offer our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving,
as we say each Sunday in the Eucharistic Prayer,
to offer our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.
The Mystery of the Cross and Resurrection
is all done for love of us,
each of us and all of us.
From Jesus’ wounded side flows
compassion, mercy, love, forgiveness and grace.
No love has ever been greater,
this love sufficient to embrace and heal and save
all fears that would paralyze us,
all suffering
and especially suffering inflicted on peoples in the name of religion,
all griefs, all sin.
No greater love than this.
Almighty God,
whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain,
and entered not into glory before he was crucified:
Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross,
may find it none other than the way of life and peace;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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