ON A
HOT, SUNNY DAY like this has been people might be forgiven for not remembering we’re
living under a dark cloud. The weather's certainly encouraged people out and, I suspect, some will have flouted the guidelines
about social distancing. The past forty
days of Lent have been dark and foreboding but now, suddenly, the sun has put
its hat on and come out to play!
It’s
easy to forget that, for forty days (or however long) we’ve been travelling
through an unexpected wilderness, where the loss of so much that’s familiar has
been disorientating and destabilising. The
journey began, as usual, when we were signed in ash with the sign of our Faith;
but quite quickly we found ourselves alone in the desert with Christ. Our unexpected retreat had begun, and I wonder,
now, what wisdom we can find through this time of silence and solitude and the
dynamic we’re entering this Holy Week.
Last
November I stood, together with a group of pilgrims from Greenwich, on the edge
of the Judean wilderness where Christ spent those forty days. We looked up at the great Monastery of the
Temptation, the Quarantana which we longed to visit, but were unable to
because we needed to move on. Little did
we know we’d be entering quarantine just four months later.
This
year’s Lent has been profoundly different.
We’ve been in a wilderness where people can feel isolated and at the
mercy of unseen forces and, like the Israelites who followed Moses millennia
ago, might experience a sense of abandonment and loss. And then, like the Israelites, what has
formed our humanity comes to the fore. Many of them moaned and longed to return
to the old days and gave themselves up to playing around rather than
re-connecting with God.
However,
during these days what’s been more noticeable are the acts of kindness shown by
people; the determination to wonder at life in the midst of darkness; the faith
in goodness and desire to help, and I’ve given thanks for what’s nurtured their
lives. And, when I notice the
selfishness of a few, I wonder at the narrative which has formed theirs. How far has it been influenced by the way our
culture has promoted the notion that competitiveness is good, winning is what
matters and strangers are of less importance than members of the ‘family’.
Today,
Palm Sunday, all this begins to come to a head as the great drama of Christ’s
Passion unfolds, a drama that’s been recalled two thousand times – mostly in a
context of normality. But whenever it’s
celebrated in the context of tragedy – war or famine, disaster or plague – it has
the ability to focus our attention in ways which can reveal deep and eternal
truths, truths about patience and waiting, suffering and death, heart-searching
and new life.
When
Jesus entered Jerusalem on this day, he did so on the humblest of beasts, a
donkey, so fulfilling words of the prophet, Zechariah who lived about five
hundred years before Christ: ‘Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your King comes to you; triumphant and
victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey … ‘ (Zech.9.9) Christ,
with humility, wants to enter our heart, wants to come into the Temple, the
centre of our being, to our soul, and cleanse it so it can reflect the glory
for which it was created. So Jesus overthrew the tables of the money-changers,
those who sought to profit from people’s need, who filled the sanctuary and
obscured the heart of holiness.
Two
thousand years later a humble virus is not only over-throwing everyone’s lives
and causing misery and death, it’s also revealing the consequence of that selfish
narrative promoted by so many, that ‘I’ come first. It’s challenging the sub-conscious ways we’re
encouraged to want something, no matter the cost – we ‘deserve it’; a system
that puts profit before people, where some become rich, no matter what happens
to the other. It’s helping us see more
clearly what it means to be human. And
we face the awful truth of the paradox that suffering is an aspect of the road
to newness of life.
So, we’ll remind ourselves, as we
always need to, of the fundamental truths our faith proclaims, truths people
need to hear. On Maundy Thursday we’ll
enter more deeply into the Passion of Christ by re-membering the drama of that
night – the example of love revealed in serving others and finding the Divine
in the Bread of life and Cup of salvation.
And we’ll wait and watch with him who is there in the darkness.
On Good Friday we’ll be faced by
the Crucifixion. So often people turn
from this day, forget its place in the mystery of life – want to celebrate as
if suffering weren’t part of the process.
This year as every year – but this year in particular – we need to stand
by, and venerate, the Cross if we’re to make sense of it all.
Then we’re faced with a period
when Christ descended into the depths.
He will enter the depths, if we open our heart to him, to cleanse them
and draw us into life as he, traditionally, dragged our primal forebears, Adam
and Eve. It’s a period of great
importance – Christ didn’t ‘rest’, he undertook that great work of inner liberation. It’s a time that’s been ignored by the church
in our land, but which, during this time of pandemic, needs to be recalled. Our heart can be cleansed for new life if we
allow Christ to enter that place. That in
spite of the murkiness that surrounds us, the sense that night isn’t yet over,
he is there in the midst of it all. That
we need to listen to him and learn from him.
And then, on Easter Day, we can take a bowl of water and affirm our
faith that this darkness will pass, and we will enter a new day though renewing
our Baptismal Vows: I believe!
The Sacred Triduum, those final
three days of Holy Week, contain important truths and if we don’t enter them,
we’ll fail to see into the heart of our faith revealed in a such a short span
of time.
Today people welcomed him – by
Friday they will have turned against him.
How fickle we are. Yet Jesus
remains constant in his belief that God held Jerusalem in his loving embrace,
as he holds all things, and places his faith in the knowledge that he must love
to the end. Isn’t that what we’re called
to do – to love to the end? For in that
way of loving, though it will involve – in so many aspects – the way of the Cross,
is the only way to discover the life God has to offer. This is the Christ-wisdom that needs rooting
in our heart.
As
we enter this week of Christ’s Passion, I’m aware some scientists believe this
might also herald the time when the virus peaks in Britain. This unwanted guest, who led us into a wilderness,
will be overcome through our many acts of love.
This Holy Week reflects the way life can triumph over death, so do not
be afraid. Our attention needs to be turned
to Christ who goes before us, who kept the eye of his heart centred on his
Father as he prepared for what was to come.
A century ago a married Frenchwoman, Élisabeth
Leseur, during an era of great suffering wrote these
words:
‘When
… life and the efforts that it calls for is a little painful and duty is arid;
when I sense most keenly that there is in me something of the highest and the
best, when I cannot find food for satisfaction in the midst of things and see
people who despise the good and ignore the beauty; then I go to the Source of
all Beauty and all Truth; I take refuge there, in ardent prayer, close to Him
who gives the most profound peace; I concern myself with the God of humanity
And I return a little better and soothed about poor humans, my brothers.’ (When
Silence Speaks, The Life and Spirituality of Elizabeth Leseur, p.80)
This Lent will pass. Easter
will come and those seeking the Christ will find him in the mists of a new
day. Let’s be faithful to our calling
and open our hearts to God as this week progresses. O come to my heart, Lord Jesus!
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