A Holy Week Pep Talk

After a bit of digging in the good ol' files I found this GEM! I know I am biased but I really feel it is a wonderful reflection to help prep us for Holy Week. Share with friends and spread along the Holy Week love! :)

Talk by David Thorp, Holy Week 1992

At each Mass in the Catholic Church, just after the bread and wine have become the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ through the action of the Holy Spirit, the whole congregation is invited to proclaim the mystery of our faith.  One of the prayers that we can say at that point is:  "Dying you destroyed our death; rising you restored our life; Lord Jesus, come in glory."

This is very powerful proclamation of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Good News on which the Catholic Church is built, the Good News which we are called to live every day.

We are now in Holy Week, a time of the year that is holy because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  He makes this week - and every week - holy because of His life for us.

Tonight I would like to share with you some of the love of Jesus Christ for us, by reflecting on His death and resurrection.
What kind of death did Jesus destroy?  One day, I was praying the Rosary and meditating on the 5 Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary.  These mysteries remind us of the sacrifice of Jesus for each person.  As I was reflecting about the Lord's Love shown in these ways, I thought of 5 areas of life, five kinds of "death" which Jesus heals by His suffering and dying.

The first mystery is:  Jesus' Agony in the Garden.  After the Last Supper, Jesus goes with three of His disciples to the Garden of Olives.  He asks them to pray, while he goes off a little distance to pray also.  When he comes back, they are asleep.  How alone Jesus must feel!  How abandoned, even by His close friends!  How apart from others in His time of need, when He is facing something very difficult!  This is a kind of "death" - being alone, alienated from others.  Jesus knows this experience; He knows how it feels; He knows the pain that it causes us because He has experienced this pain also.  He takes this pain into His own life, so that He can redeem it.  Are you experiencing this kind of pain now?  Be assured that Jesus Christ has overcome this "death".  He can help you; He can bring you peace now in the midst of loneliness.  He can show you to a group of people - His Church, the Body of Christ - where you can experience being with others, supported by them, loved by them in the Name of Jesus.

The second mystery is:  The Scourging at the Pillar.  Jesus is arrested and put on trial.  After the trial, Pilate orders that Jesus be whipped.  This is a scene filled with pain.  The instrument for the whipping is not a smooth one, but a rugged leather strap into which are sown pieces of metal and bone to dig into the flesh of the person who is whipped and rip the flesh from the body.  Jesus suffered great physical pain!  He took into His life this pain, offering it as every moment of His life to the Father so that it would be redeemed.  Many of us have suffered physical pain; Jesus know what we are experiencing.  He has overcome the power of this pain and invites us to join our pain to His, so that we would not be overcome by the pain.  He invites us to offer our pain to Him, so that He can lift us from it or give us the strength to endure it.

The third mystery is:  The Crowning with Thorns.  When I was meditating on this part of our Lord's suffering, I thought of the head.  It was on His head that this crown was placed.  The head can be seen as the symbol of our mind, our thoughts, our psychological life.  Some of us are confused in our thinking, some of us are suffering emotionally.  Jesus is the victor over these kinds of "death" also.  He has come that our minds may be clear, our emotions clear, our thinking clear.  Jesus is the answer, because He has overcome this death, to the problems of our mind.

The fourth mystery:  Jesus Carries His Cross.  The cross is placed on Jesus.  Others forced it upon Him.  The cross is something that He bears because of the plotting of others.  The cross is a symbol of oppression and persecution.  Jesus knows what it is like to have others plot against Him.  Jesus knows what it means to be oppressed, to be a victim.  Do you feel that others have made you a victim, that you have been unfairly treated, that you are persecuted - by the words and the actions of others?  Know that Jesus has experienced the same, but He has overcome the power of persecution and makes that power available to you, by His Holy Spirit, by His Holy Word, by His Sacraments -especially the Eucharist.
The fifth mystery:  Jesus Dies of the Cross.  When I thought about this event in Jesus' life, I thought of His death as the summary of all evil.  Thoughts, words, actions, neglect, persecution, physical, mental pain:  all of it.  Jesus did not stop short; Jesus did not bear part of the pain.  Jesus experienced the total pain.  Stretched on the cross, between heaven and earth:  He said "yes" to every rejection that we faced.

But, the cross was not the victory for the enemies of God.  It was the beginning of the victory of God.  By His stripes we are healed:  Isaiah tells us this.  By His dying and rising we are caught up - in Jesus Christ - into a whole new way of life.
Michel Quoist writes:  Jesus "Grasped (arms aching with stretch marks) all the members of his Body and the universe, their sins and their suffering and their death, and with one great cry, he gave it all to the Father."

The Cross is not the Father's final word.  Good Friday is real.  Maybe it feels very real to you right now.  Christ has died, and maybe we feel we are dying with Him.  But Easter Sunday is God's Word.  Christ is risen, and God's desire is that we rise with Him to new life, to new hope, to new joy, to new faith, to new love!

Jesus Christ takes all death into His life.  He knows your dying.  He wants all of to be nailed on the cross with Him.  He wants you to experience the new life of His resurrection.  It is all there for YOU!  For each one of YOU!  There is NO ONE whom Jesus will forget or neglect,  their is NO ONE'S pain, hurt and sorrow that Jesus will not bring to the cross.  There is NO ONE whom Jesus does not want to experience the New Life of the Resurrection.

EVERYONE!  That's who Jesus loves!  That's who Jesus dies for!  That's who Jesus was raised from the dead for!  EVERYONE!

What do I need to do?  This week, join yourself and all your pain - being alone, being neglected, being afraid, suffering because of illness to the body or the mind, being persecuted, being so ill that you or a family member may be dying - to Jesus Christ!  Give it to Him, so that you can know that Jesus offers it to the Father in a great act of love.  Join yourself to Jesus.  Apart from Him, there is no lasting peace, no lasting hope, no eternal life, no unending joy.  When you give yourself to
Jesus, you can know real peace, real life, real joy, real resurrection.

A final word:  I called a friend one day, but he wasn't in.  So, his answering machine came on and asked me to leave a message.  At the end of the tape were these words:  "Remember, if you were the only person on earth, Jesus Christ would have done it all just for you."  Brothers and sisters, I want you to know that love, I want you to know that today, Jesus is willing to bear it all for you.  Come to Jesus today.  Come to Jesus in a new way during this Holy Week.  Go to Church this week, to hear the words of God proclaimed, to hear of God's infinite love coming to you through Jesus Christ.

A Blessed Easter!  Live in the new life that is possible only in Jesus Christ, your Savior!

Holy Week Begins

I think you have probably realized that this blog, even with all the best intentions in the world, is never going to be a very consistent one! I think I am at peace with that now and hope you can learn to live with my not so constant blog posts.

Yesterday at Mass it really dawned on me when I grabbed the Magnificat for April 2012 instead of the supplementary one for Holy Week, that in fact Holy Week is here.  I thought to myself, "man, I got to get my head on straight and really be more present."

As I stood and listened to the readings and the long Gospel of Christ's passion and death this word kept popping into my head: UNCOMFORTABLE.  I looked around as people were squirming, yawning, kids going on their twelfth bathroom run, a teenager starting to put his behind down on the seat and his father yanking him up by the arm to keep standing and this was all during the Gospel! I thought, "man, we are a sorry bunch" (myself included).

I thought to myself, as I was trying to remain focused, "Was it comfortable when Jesus was lashed over and over again by a whip, or crowned with thorns, or made His way along a dirt road with massive pieces of wood on His shoulders, spat on, humiliated, and then nailed to a cross?"  Now I am no, "fire and brimstone" type but I think, I speak for only myself in this, that we don't like to think of the grim reality of what happened to Jesus on his final days because sometimes the thought of it can be well, "uncomfortable."  To think of what one man endured out of PURE and EVERLASTING LOVE to ensure our own salvation can be too much to bear.  And here I am wondering if the priest is going to have a lengthy homily or going to cut it short because we had the long Gospel.

Why can't I take the self-inflicted discomfort that I feel during my bootcamp style workout class on Monday's with the instructor yelling after the third time through the circuit, "it should be feeling really uncomfortable right now but dig deep and get through it" and bring that perseverance into my spiritual life?

The Closing hymn at mass was appropriately, "Jesus remember me."  I laid all my worries at His feet during that moment and continue to lay all my discomfort, anxiety, and struggles at His feet and ask that He remember me -- that all my brokenness will be made new by the sacrifices the Lord made for all of us.

I pray that you are able to "dig deep" during these last few days and lay it all before Him as He did for us and trust as a sister in Christ I will be doing the same.