You woke up this morning, you got up, (hopefully) brushed your teeth, took a shower and got ready to go to school. You went to the same classes you have always gone to, sat at the same lunch table, talked with the same group of friends and then you went home to the same house you have always gone home to. It can be easy to enter into the monotony of our day to day activities and do this week after week. However, this week we are entering into is not just another week, it’s Holy Week, let’s not let the mystery that is unfolding before us, pass us by.
It can be easy to go through the motions when it comes to living. I know I find myself in the same routines doing the same. I at times wonder how Friday got here and the week passed me by. Other weeks, it seems like the days drag and Friday cannot come soon enough. I have to wonder what this week was like for Christ? He goes from being praised at the city gates on Sunday to being nailed to a cross and dying on Friday and then rising from the dead in three days. In such a short period of time a lot has happened and I cannot help but wonder what it all means and where do I fit in?
As we enter into Holy Week we are invited to journey with Christ through His last moments of His life with His disciples on Earth. While we have heard the stories many times over of what transpired, I think it is easy for us to forget that we are directly a part of His story as we go through the motions of another Holy Week. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want this Holy Week to pass me by. I don’t want to just go through the motions as in years past and wholly miss out on what the Lord is trying to reveal to me this week.
As I reflect on how this Holy Week will be different for me this year, I am reminded of a line from a song from the Broadway play Hamilton. In the final song of the musical Eliza’s character has the lyric, “I put myself back in the narrative”. A little back story to this line if you have not seen the play, is that prior to this, Hamilton breaks Eliza’s heart to which her response is to “erase herself from the narrative” and to turn away from the suffering and pain she is feeling.
I look at Christ’s final moments on Earth leading up to His passion and death and I find that it is very easy for me to “erase myself from the narrative” of Christ. As much as I know Christ died on the Cross for me, that everything he did this week: washing the disciples feet, taking on the sins of the world, sweating blood in the garden, being tortured, made to carry a cross and eventually being nailed to it later that day, was all for me. I look at the suffering that takes place, and I can find myself pulling back; not wanting to enter in and accompany Christ through His suffering. The reality is that I have an important role in Christ’s life and so do YOU. We are invited to bring our sufferings to the Cross of Jesus. To unite our lives to His life. Just as He washed feet, carried His Cross, intercede on behalf of us, we too are invited to do the same. Let’s not let this Holy Week pass us by. Let’s actively place ourselves back in the narrative of Christ. Let us truly journey with Him and bring our own lives into the story. Let’s allow Him transform our lives as He transformed the world with His death and Resurrection! Let us not shy away from Christ’s suffering, but enter into it knowing that Christ is accompanying us through any suffering that we may have encountered in our life.
This Holy Week, let our challenge be to journey with Jesus and let Him unfold the mystery of His great love for us and reveal who we are. To take time to immerse ourselves in prayer this week. Let us desire to be present to Christ’s suffering, to accompany him through His last moments, to live them with Him. So that when Easter arrives this Sunday, we may celebrate the gift of His Resurrection and our future resurrection, knowing more fully the cost of His love for us.