Holy Week and Eastertide are times of sacred journey for Christians. We walk with Christ into the true and deepest dimensions of our lives.
All life is about journey and passage. At some time in each of our lives, we are passing:
from emptiness to abundance
from loneliness to love
from exhaustion to renewal
from anxiety to peace
from burden to freedom
from confusion to understanding
from bitterness to forgiveness
from pain to healing
from mourning to remembrance
The great Feasts of Holy Week and Easter, and the reflective weeks that follow, assure us that God accompanies us in all our journeys from darkness to light. The sacredness of these days invites us to quietly name whatever darkness surrounds us and our global family, and to reach through it to the hand of God. Like a parent leading a child in from the storm, the God of Easter longs to bring our hearts home to fullness and joy.
During these coming weeks, I will continue offering reflections centered on a single word, since many of you have expressed to me an appreciation for this approach. In the archives listed on the right of the blog, you can access more extensive reflections for each day of the liturgical cycle, accumulated over the past six years.
As we begin these sacred days, let’s pray for one another. And let us pray particularly for those whose current lives are closely patterned on the sufferings of Christ that, with Him, they may be strengthened with Easter hope and courage.
… He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:7-11
As Jesus rode into Jerusalem, many joined the procession waving their palm branches and shouting, “Hosanna!”. Each one had a unique, personal reason for their actions.
Some just got caught in traffic.
Some just liked a parade.
Some were crowd followers, doing whatever everybody else was doing.
Some were sure this was the beginning of Jesus’s kingly triumph, and wanted to be on the right side.
Some wanted to support Jesus in whatever he did.
Some, just walking quietly beside Jesus, knew this was a momentous turn in the course of history, spinning with a mix of fear and possibility.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We join the long, historical column of believers who have accompanied Jesus on Palm Sunday. What kind of faith motivates us? What shakes the palm branches in our hearts?
Are we just “caught in traffic”, mindlessly practicing rituals, but short on practical commitment to the Gospel?
Do we parade our faith on Sundays and then return to an unfaithful life?
Is the faithful practice of the Gospel slowly teaching us the meaning of the Paschal Mystery – that the palm branch must turn to the cross’s wood before we really become Christians?
Poetry: Palm Sunday – Malcolm Guite
Now to the gate of my Jerusalem, The seething holy city of my heart, The Savior comes. But will I welcome him? Oh crowds of easy feelings make a start; They raise their hands, get caught up in the singing, And think the battle won. Too soon they’ll find The challenge, the reversal he is bringing Changes their tune. I know what lies behind The surface flourish that so quickly fades; Self-interest, and fearful guardedness, The hardness of the heart, its barricades, And at the core, the dreadful emptiness Of a perverted temple. Jesus, come Break my resistance and make me your home.
Yet I, like a trusting lamb led to slaughter, had not realized that they were hatching plots against me: “Let us destroy the tree in its vigor; let us cut him off from the land of the living, so that his name will be spoken no more.”
Jeremiah 11:19
“Plot” can be an ugly word – a sinister trap woven in the darkness of fear and ignorance. Such plotters are befuddled by innocence, freedom, honesty, and goodness. Without these virtues themselves, they have no tools to meet challenges with sincerity and trust..
In our readings, we see darkened souls interweaving their fears to trap both Jeremiah and Jesus. It’s a picture of “conspiracy theories” in Biblical times!
In our current culture, we see people design elaborate arguments to justify war, rioting, oppression, weaponry, economic excess, and all the many “isms” that trap others in their vulnerability.
Lent is not just a remembrance of things past. It is a living participation in the Paschal Mystery as Christ experiences it in our times. We must ask ourselves if we ever stand with, or even silently near, the “plotters”.
Poem: The Second Crucifixion – Richard Le Gallienne (1866 – 1947)
LOUD mockers in the roaring street Say Christ is crucified again: Twice pierced His gospel-bearing feet, Twice broken His great heart in vain.
I hear, and to myself I smile, For Christ talks with me all the while.
No angel now to roll the stone From off His unawaking sleep, In vain shall Mary watch alone, In vain the soldiers vigil keep.
Yet while they deem my Lord is dead My eyes are on His shining head.
Ah! never more shall Mary hear That voice exceeding sweet and low Within the garden calling clear: Her Lord is gone, and she must go.
Yet all the while my Lord I meet In every London lane and street.
Poor Lazarus shall wait in vain, And Bartimæus still go blind; The healing hem shall ne'er again Be touch'd by suffering humankind.
Yet all the while I see them rest, The poor and outcast, on His breast.
No more unto the stubborn heart With gentle knocking shall He plead, No more the mystic pity start, For Christ twice dead is dead indeed.
So in the street I hear men say, Yet Christ is with me all the day.
The wicked said among themselves… “Let us condemn him to a shameful death; for according to his own words, God will take care of him.” These were their thoughts, but they erred; for their wickedness blinded them, and they knew not the hidden counsels of God; neither did they count on a recompense of holiness nor discern the innocent souls’ reward.
Wisdom 2: 20-22
In our readings, the Holy One meets the opposition of those who plot against him. They rationalize their persecutions, proclaiming them as acts of justice. They expect their victim to crumble under the pressure of their judgments. What they do not expect is a return of goodness, gentleness, and forgiveness – a recompense of holiness. They do not expect the great contradiction of the Cross, and they are incapable of comprehending it.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
As Lent deepens, and we come closer to the shadows of Calvary, we are summoned into the sufferings of Jesus to test our own understanding of this Great Contradiction.
What does Christ teach us about payback, unforgiveness, revenge, violence, and war – the popular “recompenses” of our culture to any resistance or injury we encounter?
What might a “recompense of holiness” look like in my life when I meet gracelessness in another person or situation?
How might it transform our belligerent culture if we modeled our behaviors on the holiness of Jesus?
Poetry: Peace-making Is Hard …. – Daniel Berrigan, SJ
hard almost as war.
the difference being one we can stake life upon and limb and thought and love.
I stake this poem out dead man to a dead stick to tempt an Easter chance— if faith may be truth, our evil chance penultimate at last,
not last. We are not lost.
When these lines gathered of no resource at all serenity and strength, it dawned on me
a man stood on his nails,
an ash like dew, a sweat smelling of death and life. Our evil Friday fled, the blind face gently turned another way. Toward Life.
… We proclaim Christ crucified, … … Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
1 Corinthians 1: 22-25
This is a great mystery of our faith: that the all-powerful One chose to redeem us by assuming our human weakness, suffering torment, and dying an ignominious death.
When my three-year-old grand-niece visited our convent, she enjoyed walking through the huge motherhouse pointing out every statue of Our Lady of Mercy.
With each discovery she would pronounce the title: “Jeezie and his Mommy”. At the end of a very long corridor, we came to a life-size wooden carving of Jesus Crucified. Little Claire studied it, looked up at me and asked, “Who is that?”.
I simply said, “I don’t know” because her sweet little heart could not bear to learn, or to possibly understand, what happened to her “Jeezie”.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
Lent is the time to deepen our understanding of what happened to Jesus because of the “foolishness of God”. That Omnipotent Love suffered, died, and rose for us so that we would understand and embrace the meaning of Love in our own lives.
Let’s pray today for a fuller awareness that our lives are a continuing participation in the Great Love. Let us use these Lenten days to find the pattern of the Cross in our world, and to look within it for the Light of the Resurrection.
Poetry: The Foolishness of God – Luci Shaw
Perform impossibilities or perish. Thrust out now the unseasonal ripe figs among your leaves. Expect the mountain to be moved. Hate parents, friends, and all materiality. Love every enemy. Forgive more times than seventy- seven. Camel-like, squeeze by into the kingdom through the needle’s eye. All fear quell. Hack off your hand, or else, unbloodied, go to hell.
Thus the divine unreason. Despairing now, you cry with earthy logic – How? And I, your God, reply: Leap from your weedy shallows. Dive into the moving water. Eyeless, learn to see truly. Find in my folly your true sanity. Then Spirit-driven, run on my narrow way, sure as a child. Probe, hold my unhealed hand, and bloody, enter heaven.
Music: The Cross is Foolishness – John Michael Talbot (lyrics below)
CHORUS: The Cross is foolishness to those who perish But for us it has become the wisdom of God The Cross is foolishness to those who perish But for us it is salvation and power from God
Some look for miracles, some look for wisdom But we preach only Jesus crucified It seems absurdity, it seems so foolish But to us it is the wisdom of God
(CHORUS)
(CHORUS)
Eye has never seen, ear has never heard Nor has it dawned on the limits of the mind What God has surely prepared For those who love Him He reveals this wisdom through the Spirit of God
Israel loved Joseph best of all his sons, for he was the child of his old age; and he had made him a beautiful long cloak. When his brothers saw that their father loved him best of all his sons, they hated him so much that they would not even greet him.
Genesis 37: 3-4
Joseph, beloved of his father Jacob, wore a multi-colored expression of his father’s love. Because others were jealous of this love, Joseph, the innocent one, was persecuted. Nevertheless, he endured and eventually forgave his brothers, giving them the means for a new life.
Joseph is a prototype of Jesus, the Beloved Son who displayed his Father’s love by his life of mercy. Jesus, Supreme Innocence, was persecuted too, endured death, forgave his persecutors, and gave us new life.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
In my prayer, I ask myself what patterns of Joseph and Jesus do I see in my world? Where do I see Innocence suffering? Where do I see mercy offered rather than persecution? Where do I see the need for acknowledgement and forgiveness?
Where do I see these things in my wider world and in myself? My awareness and response is the way I walk with Christ this Lent.
Poetry: Joseph’s Coat – George Herbert (1593-1633), English poet, orator, priest, and venerated Saint of the Church of England.
Herbert’s poem suggests that through the “joyes” and “griefs” of life, one finds sanctification only through God’s love and mercy. His imagery references Joseph’s downfall at the hands of his brothers and restoration through God’s design
Wounded I sing, tormented I indite, Thrown down I fall into a bed, and rest: Sorrow hath chang’d its note: such is his will, Who changeth all things, as him pleaseth best. For well he knows, if but one grief and smart Among my many had his full career, Sure it would carrie with it ev’n my heart, And both would runne untill they found a biere To fetch the bodie; both being due to grief. But he hath spoil’d the race; and giv’n to anguish One of Joyes coats, ticing it with relief To linger in me, and together languish. I live to shew his power, who once did bring My joyes to weep, and now my griefs to sing.
This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; Setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke; Sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; Clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own. Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed; Your vindication shall go before you, and the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer, you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!
Isaiah 58:6-9
In today’s passage from Isaiah, we are given clear instructions about fasting – some forms of this practice matter more than others.
Depriving oneself of physical comforts is an ancient practice of penance. It is intended to make us more prayerfully aware of the dynamic of sin and grace in our lives. But obviously, it is a self-centered spiritual practice.
Our reading tells us that God desires an other-centered fasting – the practice of mercy toward our sisters and brothers. And Isaiah is clear about who those needy brethren are.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy
In order to practice this mercy-centered fasting, there must be touch-points in our lives where we meet those in need. Today, we might examine our lives for our degree of insulation or isolation from society’s needy ones. We may isolate them by our attitudes, by our prejudices, by our physical distance, or perhaps just by our indifference.
Let’s ask ourselves today, “How might I reach out in prayer, service, and tenderness toward those who are in need of mercy?”
Poetry: Fasting – translated from Rumi
There's hidden sweetness in the stomach's emptiness. We are lutes, no more, no less. If the soundbox is stuffed full of anything, no music. If the brain and belly are burning clean with fasting, every moment a new song comes out of the fire. The fog clears, and new energy makes you run up the steps in front of you.
Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry. Emptier, write secrets with the reed pen. When you're full of food and drink, Satan sits where your spirit should, an ugly metal statue in place of the Spirit. When you fast, good habits gather like friends who want to help.
Fasting is Solomon's ring. Don't give it to some illusion and lose your power, but even if you have, if you've lost all will and control, they come back when you fast, like soldiers appearing out of the ground, pennants flying above them. A table descends to your tents, Jesus' table.
Expect to see it, when you fast, this table spread with other food, better than the broth of cabbages.
Music: Forty Days and Forty Nights
Forty days and forty nights You were fasting in the wild; Forty days and forty nights Tempted, and yet undefiled.
Shall not we your sorrow share And from worldly joys abstain, Fasting with unceasing prayer, Strong with you to suffer pain?
Then if Satan on us press, Flesh or spirit to assail, Victor in the wilderness, Grant we may not faint nor fail!
So shall we have peace divine; Holier gladness ours shall be; Round us, too, shall angels shine, Such as served You faithfully.
Keep, O keep us, Savior dear, Ever constant by your side, That with you we may appear At th’eternal Eastertide
Representation of St. Stephen from The Demidoff Altarpiece by Carlo Crivelli, an Italian Renaissance painter of the late fifteenth century.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we celebrate the Feast of St. Stephen, first martyr for the Christian faith.
Stephen said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” But they cried out in a loud voice, covered their ears, and rushed upon him together. They threw him out of the city, and began to stone him. The witnesses laid down their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul. As they were stoning Stephen, he called out “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”
The commemoration and readings are a drastic turn from singing angels and worshiping shepherds. The Liturgy moves quickly from welcoming a cooing baby to weeping at the death of innocence. Why?
One thought might be to keep us practical and focused on what life in Christ truly means.
Stephen, like Jesus, “was filled with grace and power, … working great wonders and signs among the people.” He, as Jesus would, met vicious resistance to his message of love and reconciliation. He, as Jesus would, died a martyr’s death while forgiving his enemies.
The Church turns us to the stark truth for anyone who lets Christ truly be born in their hearts. We will suffer as Jesus did – as Stephen did. The grace and power of Christ in our life will be met with resistance, or at least indifference.
Brother will hand over brother to death, and the father his child; children will rise up against parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by all because of my name, but whoever endures to the end will be saved.
We may not shed blood but, in Christ, we will die to self. When we act for justice for the poor and mercy for the suffering, we will be politically frustrated and persecuted. When we forgive rather than hate, we will be mocked. Powerful people, like the yet unconverted Saul in today’s second reading, may catalyze our suffering by their determined hard-heartedness.
Our Gospel confirms the painful truth:
“You will be hated by all because of my name, but whoever endures to the end will be saved.”
Tomorrow, the liturgy picks up the poetic readings from John’s letters. These are delights to the soul.
But for today, it is a hard look, with Stephen, at what Christmas ultimately invites us to.
Poetry: St. Stephen by Malcolm Guite
Witness for Jesus, man of fruitful blood, Your martyrdom begins and stands for all. They saw the stones, you saw the face of God, And sowed a seed that blossomed in St. Paul. When Saul departed breathing threats and slaughter He had to pass through that Damascus gate Where he had held the coats and heard the laughter As Christ, alive in you, forgave his hate, And showed him the same light you saw from heaven And taught him, through his blindness, how to see; Christ did not ask ‘Why were you stoning Stephen?’ But ‘Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ Each martyr after you adds to his story, As clouds of witness shine through clouds of glory.
Music: Gabriel’s Oboe from the movie “The Mission”, played by Henrik Chaim Goldschmidt, principal oboist of The Royal Danish Orchestra in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 78 which commands us:
Do not forget the works of the Lord!
The psalm, in its entirety, is a recital of God’s faithfulness to Israel over time, culminating in the triumph of David/Jerusalem/Temple.
God chose David his servant, took him from the sheepfolds. From tending ewes God brought him, to shepherd Jacob, the people, Israel, God’s heritage. He shepherded them with a pure heart; with skilled hands he guided them.
Psalm 78: 70-73
David foreshadows Jesus, the Good Shepherd who not only tends the sheep but becomes the Lamb of God. Jesus completes our salvation by his death on the Cross. In him, the long journey of Psalm 78 is ultimately fulfilled.
Philippians’ exquisite hymn captures the profound nature of that fulfillment:
Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.
Philippians 2:5-8
Each of our lives reflects, in its own way, the salvation journey we find in scripture. We experience the same kind of twists and turns, highs and lows as those described in Psalm 78.
In each of these moments, we are held in the mystery of the Cross wherein Christ transforms all suffering to grace:
Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:9-11
Poetry: Good Friday – Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
Am I a stone and not a sheep That I can stand, O Christ, beneath thy cross, To number drop by drop Thy blood’s slow loss, And yet not weep? Not so those women loved Who with exceeding grief lamented thee; Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly; Not so the thief was moved; Not so the sun and moon Which hid their faces in a starless sky, A horror of great darkness at broad noon— I, only I. Yet give not o’er, But seek thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock; Greater than Moses, turn and look once more And smite a rock.
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we are presented with a summary version the Ten Commandments.
But the daily readings have skipped over a dramatic passage. In between today’s reading and yesterday’s, Mount Sinai has exploded with the thunderous voice of God.
On the morning of the third day there were peals of thunder and lightning, and a heavy cloud over the mountain, and a very loud blast of the shofar,* so that all the people in the camp trembled. But Moses led the people out of the camp to meet God, and they stationed themselves at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was completely enveloped in smoke, because the LORD had come down upon it in fire. The smoke rose from it as though from a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled violently. The blast of the shofar grew louder and louder, while Moses was speaking and God was answering him with thunder.
Exodus 19:16-19
The writer of Exodus wants us to know that God was serious when delivering the Commandments:
With appropriate ritual preparation on the part of Israel (19:1–15), YHWH comes storming into the presence of Israel (19:16–25). This divine arrival, technically characterized as a theophany, a showing of God, is a disturbing upheaval of the mountain. This description of divine arrival is highly stylized and may reflect something of a repeatable liturgical performance. YHWH, shrouded in mystery, is accompanied by fire, smoke, the violent shaking of the mountain, a blast of trumpets, and thunder. The mountain, occupied by this assertive deity, is now saturated with dangerous holiness, so dangerous that YHWH might “break out against them” (19:22).
Walter Brueggemann – Delivered into Covenant (Pivotal Moments in the Old Testament)
These commandments, delivered clearly and deliberately in today’s passage, form the immutable groundwork for relationship with God. God makes it clear from the beginning that friends of God honor both God and neighbor, and in so doing honor themselves. While many of the Commandments are stated as prohibitions, they are really guides toward wholeness and balance in spiritual and communal life.
I remember, as a youngster, using the Commandments as a guide when preparing my list for weekly confession. It was hard to generate that list because, most of the time, I was a fairly good kid. I was pretty sure I hadn’t coveted my neighbor’s wife or anything like that.
I had not yet learned to capture the spirit of the Commandments which is just and humble relationship with God and God’s Creation. This relationship is rooted in awareness of and reverence for God’s Presence in all things.
In the Beatitudes, Jesus teaches us the perfection of the Ten Commandments. A magnificent book that helped me learn this is The Spirituality of the Beatitudes by Michael Crosby – another life-changing book.
But the seed sown on rich soil is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold.
Matthew 13:23
Like the seed variously scattered in today’s Gospel reading, our daily choices and actions may or may not fall short of the fertile ground. Of course, we have the spirit of the Commandments as a guide for that assessment. But the surer guide is the new Law of Love poured out for us on the still and silent Mount Calvary, and codified for us in the Gospel.
Poetry: The Garden of Love – William Blake, the famous mystical poet of late 18th and early 19th century England, was a deeply committed Christian. But he loathed organized religion because he felt that it destroyed the spirit of true faith. I chose this poem because it might reflect what happens when we see the Commandments only as spiritless rules.
I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen: A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green.
And the gates of this Chapel were shut, And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door; So I turn'd to the Garden of Love, That so many sweet flowers bore.
And I saw it was filled with graves, And tomb-stones where flowers should be: And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, And binding with briars, my joys & desires.
Music: The Ten Commandments – Johnny Cash – A delightful song that suggests we can find theologians anywhere if we just look for them! 😉
Lavish Mercy 