FATHER PAUL writes ... - March 2008
This month includes the whole of the second part of Lent. I wonder how you feel as Holy Week approaches. Do you feel weary at the thought of having to go through it all again? All those trips to church. All those services. If you’re involved in reading or singing or serving or flower arranging or furniture moving you’ve got even more of a reason to feel tired in advance. This, after all, is the busiest part of the Church’s year. There are so many jobs to be done.
The result is a sense of inevitability. It all just has to happen. The palm crosses have to be made and blessed and carried in procession. The Passion story has to be read. Twelve feet have to be washed. The Blessed Sacrament has to be transported to a special place and a watch has to be kept to commemorate Jesus’ time in Gethsemane. The Cross has to be venerated in a church that has been stripped of its decorations. On Holy Saturday there’s the usual fuss about kindling the new fire and then trying to light the paschal candle from it and get it through the church door. The priest has to do a lot of singing about what the candle means. Later all the bells have to be rung when the Gloria starts, and people have to get the timing just right. On Easter morning there has to be a procession to the Easter garden. At the end of Mass Cadbury’s Crème Eggs have to be sprinkled with holy water and given out.
All of this is so predictable that we hardly stop to take in the wonder of it. We’re so involved in a familiar religious routine that we’re sometimes in danger of forgetting that the great events that we’re celebrating didn’t have to happen. They only happened because someone made them happen.
The gospels make it clear that, after his ministry in Galilee and elsewhere, Jesus deliberately chose to go to Jerusalem. He knew that this would involve confrontation with the authorities and his probable arrest and execution, but he knew also that, if he were to remain faithful to his vocation, he had to make this journey. Whatever the risks in store, whatever the price to be paid, he chose to go in this direction. "Now it happened that as the time drew near for him to be taken up, he resolutely turned his face towards Jerusalem." (Luke 9:51)
As I think about what happened after Jesus arrived in Jerusalem, as I picture him teaching in the temple or gathering with his disciples in the upper room or sweating with anguish in the garden before the arrival of the soldiers, I’m always struck by the fact that he could have walked away from it. He could have told himself that he’d done quite enough and gone back to Nazareth. He could have gone back to making tables and chairs. He was free to choose. He was not somehow programmed to do what in fact he did. With much difficulty, with much inner conflict he chose to do it, and he did it out of love - love for his heavenly Father, love for his human brothers and sisters. He wanted to see things through to the end. He wanted to stay faithful to his calling, whatever the cost.
So, there is nothing inevitable about what happened in the first Holy Week or at the first Easter. It happened because a human being like ourselves chose to behave in a certain kind of way. Realizing this should fill us with amazement and gratitude. It should fill us, too, with a desire for a deeper experience and understanding of the love that motivated Jesus and which has made it possible for us to share his risen life.
As Holy Week approaches, please don’t regard it as a drawn-out and tiring religious routine that’s got to be gone through yet again. See it as a God-given opportunity to picture and ponder the generous love of Jesus which drove him step by step to the Cross. And use it as a way of allowing that same love to come into your life and start to transform it, by the power of the resurrection.
Fr Paul