Let me be frank. There are things about Holy Week that I dread. There’s some wonderful music, I love carrying palms on Palm Sunday (and seeing them pop up in people’s pockets around town), I love the celebration of the Last Supper on Thursday. But then there’s Good Friday. And it’s so sad.
Do you ever get that feeling? Not really wanting to stick around sadness, wishing it would go away, avoiding that phone call or that visit with someone who’s faced loss, wishing you could skip a certain funeral?
Down times can take the stuffing out of us. They can do that for me. I can understand only too well why Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Let this cup of suffering be taken away from me.”
I think of the cowardice of the disciples, Peter denying his Lord three times before the cock crowed, the horror they must have felt watching the Crucifixion.
Interestingly enough, it’s the women who really stuck by till the bitter end, “Jesus’ mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene stood near the cross” according to the account in John.
And who are the ones who first see Jesus’ resurrected self on Easter morn? The women. Mary Magdalene thought he was the gardener at first. Then he says her name, “Mary.” He knows her. She knows him.
So this is what I remind myself at Holy Week. Be present. Be aware. Be patient. Be attentive. Even to the pain of it all. Being open to that allows us to see the bright, brilliant, dazzling, impossible-to-comprehend truth.
The Lord is risen, the Lord is risen indeed. It’s coming. Right around the corner.
