HAPPY EASTER!  The Lord is Risen. Satan's head has been crushed. God has put enmity between the woman (you and I) and Satan.  The power of the resurrection is within us. In our baptisms we have died with Christ. We will also rise with Christ, not only at the end of our lives, but every day to new life, to a life of grace, a life of goodness, a life of holiness, a life of love, a life of forgiveness.  We, too, are empowered to forgive as Jesus forgave us on the cross. We, too, are empowered, to thirst for holiness and righteousness as Jesus did on the cross. We, too, are empowered to overcome evil with goodness, anger with patience, revenge with forgiveness as Jesus did on the cross. ALLELUIA!

Mary Standing by and with her Son

Holy  Saturday: A day of mourning as Mary and the disciples grieve the crucifixion and death of Jesus.  Many must have known that the leaders of her nation were plotting to kill her son. No doubt, also, Jesus did not keep secrets from His mother.  He knew that His hour was approaching. I sense Mary did, too. Jesus’ prayer at the Last Supper,  “Father,  the hour has come: glorify your Son so that your Son may glorify you; so that, just as you have given him power over all humanity, he may give eternal life to all those you have entrusted to him” does not mean that the physical and emotional pain of His crucifixion and death were negated.  Both Jesus and Mary suffered the full blunt and excruciating agony of the way in which He was treated by the leaders of their nation.  Mary, most likely, witnessed all of it, I believe. She would not have abandoned her Son in the hour of His greatest need.  No healthy mother would do that to her child.

As I reflected on the high probability that Mary witnessed, not only Jesus’ dying on the cross, but also his being nailed to it, I thought of the millions of men and women, children and adolescents, young adults, “nailed” to agonizing, humiliating, violent abusive situations:

·         Those unjustly imprisoned

·         Those sold to the sex trade, to forced labor camps/factories

·         Those “locked” in abusive marriages or other relationships

·         Those enslaved to any and all kinds of addictive behaviors

·         Those battling terminal illnesses and chronic mental disorders

·         Those living in extreme poverty and forced to live on our streets

·         Those forced into gang activity

·         Those unprotected from being murdered in the womb

·         Those unable to escape verbal, emotional, mental, physical and sexual abuse in or outside of their families

O Jesus, you are nailed to the cross and crucified every day by humanity’s inhumane ways of treating each other.

 O Mary, is there any sorrow as great as your sorrow as you watch your sons and daughters, especially little children, being “nailed”  and abandoned to agonizing situations, as Jesus was nailed to the cross and crucified on Calvary?

GOOD FRIDAY

 

 

Isaiah 52: 14; 53: 2b-6—There were many who were astonished at him—so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of mortals. He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised and we held him of no account. Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, stuck down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Holy Thursday

Holy Thursday: “He loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end,” we read in today’s Gospel, Jn 13: 1-15.  This is the day Jesus begins His bitter passion.  Before doing so, He models humility, servanthood, and incredible love for us, both in the washing of the apostles’ feet, including those of His betrayer, and by the giving us the Eucharist, whereby He is with us always sacramentally.  Following the Passover meal Jesus leaves for the Garden of Gethsemane. He says to His disciples: “My soul is sorrowful to the point of death.”  He asks them to stay awake and pray with Him. They fall asleep. Will I?

Jesus’ suffering is so severe emotionally and spiritually that his “sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood” (Lk 22:44).  He prays: “If you are willing [Father], take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, let your will be done, not mine. Then an angel appeared to Him, coming from heaven, to give Him strength” (Lk 22: 42-43).  When I am in suffering severely, do I seek out others to pray for and with me? Do I realize that God suffers with me in those moments and, not only sends “angels” to give me strength but that He Himself comes also to be at my side to comfort me, strengthen m e, console me, and transform my way of handling the painful event so that I become a better person through it, that I move from “death” into new life?

Jesus' confidence

“My appointed time draws near…,” Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel, Mt. 26: 14-25. As the God-Man, Jesus knew that He would soon be given over to the power of Satan so that you and I would not ultimately succumb to his power. He was about to secure eternal salvation for the entire world. The One  who is guiltless, sinless, would soon assume the guilt of us all upon Himself as He hung upon the cross of crucifixion and death on Calvary.

Jesus knew the Hebrew Scriptures. The prophet Isaiah’s Suffering Servant Song, part of which was today’s first reading, Is 50: 4-9a, must have given Jesus a lot of strength.

The Lord God has given me

a well-trained tongue,

that I might know how to speak to the weary

a word that will rouse them.

Morning after morning

He opens my ear that I may hear;

and I have not rebelled,

have not turned back….

The Lord God is my help,

therefore I am not disgraced;

I have set my face like flint,

knowing that I shall not be put to shame.

He is near who upholds my right…
See, the Lord
God is my help;

Who will prove me wrong?

 

To whom and to what do I look for strength?

What has God given me “morning after morning” to prepare me for what the day holds?

Am I as confident and secure as Jesus was when it seems as though Satan’s power has been unleashed upon me? Do I realize, in those times, that my help comes from the Lord God and that God will not let me “be put to shame,” that the One “who upholds my right” is near?

Called from birth to be God's servants

Today’s first reading, Is. 49: 1-6, is all about God’s servants, you and me, and about Jesus.  Each of us is called from birth to serve the Lord, to carry out the Father’s will for us, to live intelligent, creative lives for the sake of the Kingdom and to be as “sharp” in doing good, perceiving and avoiding evil as any “two-edged sword”.  We are conceal in the “shadow” of God’s love and “polished” by grace, even, and especially, when we think we have “toiled in vain, and for nothing, uselessly [spending our] strength.” 

 Think of Jesus’ ministry coming to an end in the way it did. Truly, it looked as though He had “toiled in vain, and for nothing, uselessly, spent…[His] strength.”  At the Last supper He confides to His assembled disciples that one of them is going to betray Him and another will deny Him 3xs before the cock crows. In the darkest of hours, Jesus is abandoned by those He thought were faithful friends.

When things get rough in life, do I abandon others? Do I walk away from Jesus, from people who count on my support, even betraying them and walking out into “the night” to do that which I know is wrong of me to do?” When push comes to shove, do I deny knowing Jesus, knowing those who need me to stand by their side?  In the difficulties of life do I abandon the faith in which I was raised?

The victory of justice

In today's first reading, Is. 42: 1-7, Isaiah prophesizes that Jesus “shall bring forth justice to the nations, [shall] bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness….I, the Lord, have called you for the victory of justice.” 

 

As yesterday we celebrated Palm Sunday, we read about the people loudly proclaiming Jesus as King, praising God for all the good that He had done in their midst. On Good Friday, we will hear those same people shouting for His death. He has disappointed them, as they were expecting a king who would restore their nation to greatness.  They felt betrayed and in their grief abandon Jesus to His executioners.

In today’s Gospel, Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with “a liter of costly perfumed oil made from genuine aromatic nard” and dries them with her hair” (Jn 12:1-11).  Amid Judas’ protests that that costly perfume should have been sold and the money given to the poor—proclamations to cover up his hypocrisy and intent to steal the money later for personal use—Jesus tells Judas to leave the woman alone, that she is preparing his body for burial.  Jesus protects Mary, who, in her poverty and lowliness and out of great love expresses reverence and gratitude to the Lord for His forgiveness of her many sins.  That same reverence and love is shown to each of us by Jesus on Calvary, where “our feet” are washed in the blood and water that flows  from Jesus’ side. And as Jesus tells Peter when washing his feet that he is clean all over, so, too, He tells us that, "though our sins are scarlet, they will be white as snow" (Is 1: 16-18)!   On Calvary we will witness justice being done to the nations of the whole world, as we watch Jesus surrender His life to His Father.  In that act of obedience, we will be restored, not politically or according to worldly desires, but spiritually to friendship with the Father.  On Calvary we will witness  Jesus crush the head of Satan--the principalities and the powers of Satan that we will see at  work in Judas this week,  shall be destroyed for us forever.   We truly will witness “the victory of justice” as we commemorate Jesus’ crucifixion, death and resurrection.

O, the humility, the poverty, the reverence, the love of our God for all of humankind!