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.