Amid the difficult times and the strife that awaits those who follow in the footprints of Christ, do we forget who we are and what it is that we are called to do?
The day after Palm Sunday is a time that could otherwise be filled with the distractions of those focused on the Triduum in just a few days. There is a lot to prepare (like the disciples sent ahead by Jesus in yesterday’s Gospel) and a lot to keep in mind while juggling the demands of a modern family, work, and personal life during one of the most important times of the liturgical year. For these and other reasons, it is good that our First Reading today calls us back to our roots and reminds us of what our mission statement is as Christians.
Here is my servant whom I uphold,
my chosen one with whom I am pleased,
Upon whom I have put my Spirit;
he shall bring forth justice to the nations,
Not crying out, not shouting,
not making his voice heard in the street.
A bruised reed he shall not break,
and a smoldering wick he shall not quench,
Until he establishes justice on the earth;
the coastlands will wait for his teaching.Thus says God, the LORD,
who created the heavens and stretched them out,
who spreads out the earth with its crops,
Who gives breath to its people
and spirit to those who walk on it:
I, the LORD, have called you for the victory of justice,
I have grasped you by the hand;
I formed you, and set you
as a covenant of the people,
a light for the nations,
To open the eyes of the blind,
to bring out prisoners from confinement,
and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.
(Isaiah 42:1-7)
What the prophet proclaims here is what Jesus’s whole life and ministry are about: bringing forth justice to the nations, opening the eyes of the blind, freeing prisoners, bringing people out of darkness, proclaiming the word of God through means not of coercion but of gentleness, love, and peace.
Because it is so easy to get distracted by our own personal devotional sense of awe, wonder, sorrow, and joy — not that these things are bad as we move from the Celebration of the Lord’s Supper on Thursday through Good Friday to Easter — we can forget what this celebration of the Passion of the Lord is really means.
It is the via crucis, the “way of the cross,” and a “way” is a path to be followed. This is not to suggest that the path is all about crucifixion (pace Mel Gibson), but the way is about the Truth that will set us free, the life that we live after the model of Jesus Christ.
The truth that sets us free and the path or way of life we are called to follow is about more than suffering, just as Holy Week is about more than death. It is about the love that offers itself freely for the sake of the other and the life that conquers death and forbids mortality from having the last word.
Are we ready to walk the via crucis, the way of Christ that leads to the Lord’s Supper and to Golgatha and to the empty tomb? Are we willing to exercise the mission statement Isaiah reminds us of and that Jesus modeled on the very path to the cross? Or are we only focused on what “we can get out” of”Holy Week and Easter?
The journey has begun again.
“No one can really embrace the Christian asceticism mapped out in the New Testament unless he [or she] has some idea of the positive, constructive function of self-denial. The Holy Spirit never asks us to renounce anything without offering us something much higher and much more perfect in return … The function of self-denial is to lead to a positive increase of spiritual energy and life. The Christian dies, not merely in order to die but in order to live. And when he [or she] takes up his cross to follow Christ, the Christian realizes, or at least believes, that he is not going to die to anything but death. The Cross is the sign of Christ’s victory over death. The Cross is the sign of life. It is the trellis upon which grows the Mystical Vine whose life is infinite joy and whose branches we are. If we want to share the life of that Vine, we must grow on the same trellis and must suffer the same pruning.” — Thomas Merton
I’ve always been a little turned off by one of the two traditional sayings used during the distribution of ashes: “Remember you are dust and to dust you will return.” It has, at first glance, seemed like quite a “downer” and a depressing sort of reflection. On the one hand, it makes sense that an expression and reminder of penance on the first day of the Season of Lent might have a depressing, or at least somber, quality. Yet on the other hand, a second look at this expression does indeed cause us to remember a deeply significant truth about our existence and humanity. We are dust, as Genesis 2:7 explains, because God formed humanity from the “dust of the earth.” This has some radical implications for how we understand ourselves and our relationship to the rest of creation.
Evening came and morning followed: Easter Sunday. Now that Easter Monday has dawned upon us, how do we approach the remaining days of this liturgical season? Unlike other important times in the Church Calendar, Easter is marked by a full season — not just a feast or solemnity or even octave — it gets weeks worth of emphasis! And with good reason. Here we celebrate the new life Christ has brought to us, the Salvation — the reuniting of all creation back to God — that comes in the Resurrection and made possible by God’s loving decision to enter the world as one like us.
This post was so popular last year, I thought I’d repost it in 2012 to share again. Here are some of Merton’s thoughts on Ash Wednesday.
The music. The music at St. Francis of Assisi Church is beyond this world. I cannot begin to describe how wonderful the liturgical music is at St. Francis. Meredith Dean Augustin is the director of music at St. Francis and deserves so much credit for what she brings together. The talent of the musicians and vocalists, many of them professionals in the City, raises the spirit of the liturgical assembly beyond words. I think I had chills throughout the entire Responsorial Psalm on Good Friday — between the cantor and the string quartet, I was lost in the prayer of the music. The choir also sang the ENTIRE Passion Narrative from John’s Gospel on Good Friday. Incredible. Simply incredible.
“After this, aware that everything was now finished, in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I thirst.” There was a vessel filled with common wine. So they put a sponge soaked in wine on a sprig of hyssop and put it up to his mouth. When Jesus had taken the wine, he said, “It is finished.” And bowing his head, he handed over the spirit.” (John 19:28-30)
It’s not everyday that you find an article about the Bible in a publication like The Chronicle of Higher Education, but then again it is Holy Week and stranger things have happened. A rather lengthy piece titled, “
On Friday — Good Friday — I will be in New York City to preach the Seven Last Words of Christ at St. Francis of Assisi Church in midtown Manhattan. It has been a long-standing tradition since the Sixteenth Century in many places to have someone, or several people, preach on the seven phrases Jesus uttered from the Cross found in the four Gospel accounts. Perhaps the most famous reflection on the Seven Last Words of Christ is Joseph Haydn’s 1786 “Die sieben letzten Worte unseres Erlösers am Kreuze,” which was originally performed on Good Friday in a city in Southern Spain that year.
