As we prepare for Holy Week, let's not forget that we are a pilgrim people, making our journey of faith in this life by walking together with the children of God of all nations and all ages. Holy Week gives us the opportunity to renew our faith and our hope and to find comfort in the love and power of our God who will not allow evil, sin and death to destroy us. We do this by tracing the footsteps of Jesus and making them our own. Perhaps we can then come to understand more powerfully how much we need to experience suffering, dying and rising in our own lives.
The story of Holy Week is one which continues today and every day. It is the story told in the lives of the poor, in the lives of refugees and immigrants, in the lives of people in prison or on death row. It is felt in the lives of married and single parents alike, in the lives of the elderly and infirm and those who feel alone and abandoned. Holy Week becomes real in the lives of soldiers and combatants and noncombatants. It strikes the hearts of those who are victims of racism and in those who are powerless to oppression. It is even felt in the life of planet earth which has been, and continues to be, so abused.
Holy Week allows us to relive the final days of the Savior in order to reinforce our conviction that resurrection always follows death, that victory always crowns our failures.
So we will come to be with Him in mind and spirit on Passion Sunday and enter Jerusalem with Him.
We will come to be with Him on Holy Thursday, learn again the meaning of Christian service through the washing of His disciples' feet, and we will recognize Him in the breaking of the Bread.
We will stand with His disciples on Good Friday, watch with Him in the Garden, and share His pain and shame on Calvary.
And on these days we will recognize ourselves - waving palms and shouting hosannas, asleep in the Garden, abandoning Him at the foot of the Cross and locking the door of the upper room in fear.
Even so, we will find Him suddenly standing among us on Easter Sunday, offering us hope, forgiveness and peace.
Holy Week is the single story that describes our struggle for communion and solidarity in the midst of great challenges, injustices, suffering and even death. Our reflection on the passion of Jesus should make it possible for all of us to find true meaning in the cross. For it is the Crucified and Risen Jesus who invities us away from the despair of death that is the cross into the hope of new life that is the resurrection.
