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April 1, 2007 Pastor's Perspective“Let us go forth in peace, proclaiming Jesus
our Messiah, as did the crowds who welcomed him to Jerusalem.” The invitation to follow extends to the whole of Holy Week. As we move through Holy Week, the triumph of Palm Sunday is transformed into the tragedy of Jesus’ arrest, trial and crucifixion. We gain perspective, though, on the deeper, salvific meaning of these events through the daily readings. The Old Testament selections from the prophet Isaiah’s “servant songs” tell the story of God’s upright and just servant who is persecuted and killed. This servant was the primary model by which Christians could make sense of Jesus’ unexpected death. In the gospels, Jesus’ last few days are marked by the growing hostility of the religious leaders and the startling realization that even his closest disciples will betray him and deny him. At the Last Supper Jesus called His disciples to “Do this in Memory of Me”. . . . and so we have down through the centuries: “Was ever another command so obeyed? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy and before it to extreme old age and after it, from the pinnacles of earthly greatness to the refuge of fugitives in caves and dens of the earth. Men have found no better thing than this to do for kings at their crowning and for criminals going to the scaffold; for armies in triumph or for a bride and bridegroom in a little country church; for the proclamation of a dogma or for a good crop of wheat; for the wisdom of a Parliament of a mighty nation or for a sick old woman afraid to die; for a school boy sitting for an examination or for Columbus setting out to discover America; for the famine of whole provinces or for the soul of a dead lover; in thankfulness because my father did not die of pneumonia; for a village headman much tempted to return to fetish because the yams had failed; because the Turk was at the gates of Vienna; for the repentance of Margaret, for the settlement of a strike; for a son for a barren woman; for Captain So-and-so, wounded and prisoner of war; while the lions roared in the nearby amphitheatre; on the beach at Dunkirk; while the hiss of scythes in the thick June grass came faintly through the windows of the church; tremulously, by an old monk on the fiftieth anniversary of his vows; furtively, by an exiled bishop who had hewn timber all day in a prison camp near Murmansk; gorgeously, for the canonization of St. Joan of Arc – one could fill many pages with the reasons why we have done this, and not tell a hundredth part of them. And best of all, week by week and month by month, on a hundred thousand successive Sundays, faithfully, unfailingly, across all the parishes of Christendom, the pastors have done this to make the plebs sancta Dei – the holy common people of God.” The Shape of the Liturgy by Dom Gregory Dix
The highpoint of Holy Week and the entire Christian Year is found in the “Triduum”, Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil. Will you watch with the Lord this Holy Week and follow His Way? Will you do this in His Memory? May this truly be for all of us a “Holy Week, Fr. Chuck
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