Today we begin the
celebration of Holy Week, a very special time when we reflect on the
events that lead us through the death and resurrection of Jesus,
events which changed the course of history forever. Because of
these events we can now go to heaven when we die. It’s that
simple.
We begin with a short
account of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, hailed by the people as a
great prophet. They threw down palm branches in front of him
and shouted ‘Hosanna! Blessings on him who comes in the name
of the Lord.’ Yet within a few days everything changed.
He was betrayed for money, illegally tried, then tortured and
killed. Today we read the full account of his passion. It
is the main focus of our mass.
Even though it is a sad
event that we remember, it is also a day of celebration, because what
we remember is the wonderful event that made it possible for us to
experience the eternal life after this one. That is so
important, because if we couldn’t hope for a better life after this
one, it would be very hard to keep going a lot of the time.
Everyone suffers as
you know, there are no exceptions. Probably one of the most
difficult things for any of us to experience when we are suffering,
is the sense that we have been abandoned by everyone. Sometimes
we even feel that God has left us and we are on our own. This
can be so difficult because we believe that at least God won’t let
us down even if everyone else does. But where do we turn when
God disappears too? There is nowhere left to go. This is
the worst kind of suffering. Of course the truth is that God
never abandons us, but we may feel that He has.
Just before Jesus’
death on the cross, he cries out: ‘My God, my God, why have you
abandoned me?’ What does this mean? It seems to point
out that even Jesus felt completely abandoned by the Father. He
felt totally alone.
Why would God the
Father hide himself from Jesus at the time when Jesus most needed to
know He was there? Perhaps it was so that Jesus could
experience this worst kind of suffering, the suffering of believing
that you have been abandoned even by God. By experiencing this,
Jesus is brought to the furthest extreme of suffering, as it were.
After this there is nothing that he has not experienced and this
means that he can understand us in every kind of suffering we go
through, even the feeling of being abandoned by God, because he has
been there. We can no longer say, ‘You don’t know what it’s
like!’ because now he does.
I think it is also good
to remember that even though we may feel we have been
abandoned by God at times, that in fact we have not. But
sometimes God allows us to go through this for reasons only known to
God. It seems to be part of what forms us, even though it is
very difficult and we shrink away from it.
Finally I want to
mention Our Lady. She also was at the foot of the cross.
Years before she had been told by the angel Gabriel that Jesus would
be great and would reign forever as king. He would be called
Son of the Most High God. What had happened to all these
promises now, as she watched Jesus come to the end of his life before
her eyes? Although Mary must have suffered terribly at all she
had to witness, she didn’t give up hope. She believed that
what God had said would come true and she hoped and believed even
without understanding. God invites us to do the same; to hope
even when we don’t understand. There is so much that we don’t
understand, but we try to believe that God knows what God is doing
and so we don’t give up.