Though my Holy Land Pilgrimage was in early October of 2015, my
thoughts, visions and memories are still fresh in my mind, especially during
Lent and Holy Week. I kept a journal
during our 10-day journey and St. Mark’s Gospel on this Passion/Palm Sunday reminds
me of the depth of God’s love for His creation as He returns to Jerusalem for
the last time to give us life everlasting through His death and Resurrection.
Two brief journal entries I wrote gave me an insight into the loneliness Jesus must have felt after He was arrested, brought to trial and crucified on the cross. The first was where Christ was dragged before Caiaphas to be tried: Jesus was lowered into a pit that served as His prison before being taken to Pilate. In a corner was a lectern with a book opened to Psalm 88 from which I read aloud to my fellow sojourners, tears running down my cheeks as I read verses 7 through 9. I have never felt so desolate in my life.
The second journal entry followed a quiet 4 a.m. walk of the Via Delarosa in which prayerful readings from scripture were read along with a song almost whispered of Where You There. It was about the 11th Station where Jesus was nailed to the cross that I wrote: As Deacon Doug Cook read our prayer for the 11th Station, he cried and I too felt overcome with Jesus’ grief. After putting my arm into the hole where His cross was hammered into the ground, I went to a single kneeler in the back of the area where I prayed head down asking God’s forgiveness for times I abandoned Him in my sins.
Imagine, if we can, what Jesus felt like from the time He triumphantly
enters into Jerusalem after raising Lazarus from the dead to His death on a
wooden cross, condemned for sharing God’s truth to all who would listen. As the Son of God the Father, He has all the
power to command everyone to follow His lead in the areas of preaching,
teaching and healing. And yet, in His
obedience to the will of His Father, He does “not regard equality with God
something to be grasped.” He instead,
suffers all the indignities of a human so He could fulfill His promise to His
Father to die for our sins, end death and provide us with everlasting life.
Christ’s acceptance of His passion and crucifixion is a witness to
God’s love for humanity. And yet, from
the time He spent on earth until present day, there is always a question:
Why? Why would God, Who is capable of
doing anything, take such a painful route to accomplish His plan and work to
convince humanity that this is the correct journey to being saved?
The quickest answer is that humanity with its free will refused
acceptance of earlier covenants as not fitting their personal needs from their
perspective. Their expectation was not
met without a lot of difficulty on humanity’s side and that seems to question
God’s unconditional love without a buy in by us. In other words, their perception was
unfulfilled in people’s minds because they couldn’t accept God’s plan as a
joint effort. Their response is that a
gift should not have to be reciprocal, even if it is only a thank you by living
a moral life.
If we are to understand and receive a full picture of God’s love, mercy
and forgiveness for us, we need to participate just as Jesus did as a human who
walked among us. Doing that often brings
pain. Read about any person who was
canonized as a saint and their journey involved an adjustment to embrace a
moral compass of God’s grace.
Our Lenten journey is meant to bring us to a place in our lives where
we have spent the better part of 40 days looking deeply into our heart, mind,
soul and strength for an answer of how to become a better person. Jesus did that by facing into life’s
challenges with a positive approach that helped people to believe they are loved
and capable of sharing that love with others.
With four days left until the end of Lent and beginning of the Triduum,
let us define what we have discovered about our relationship with God. We might find that the challenges of life
bring us triumphs, at least in small ways, to be Jesus’ best representative of bringing
faith, hope and love to all of God’s creation.
It seems a small price to pay for all that God has done for us.
Reading 1: Isaiah 50: 4-7
Reading 2: Philippians 2: 6-11
Gospel: Mark 14: 1 – 15: 47
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