Tuesday, April 16, 2019

It's Holy Week!



This is the busiest, the most exasperating and the most trying time of the year for someone who, like me, works for Holy Mother Church.  We have lists to make, check and double check.  We have parents calling, sponsors of the Elect calling, questions being asked from all directions.  It can be tiring.  It can be frustrating.  It can make the idea of total retirement really tempting.

It is also the holiest time of the year.  It is the week where we, as Catholics, mark the time when the historical events of 2000 years ago culminated in the beginning of the End Times.  Ever since this time, when a Roman Magistrate set in motion that which opened the gates of heaven to those who choose to set their sights on eternal salvation, us Christians have been celebrating.

When you stop and think about it, we are celebrating something really odd.

No wonder people see us as 'The Other'.

Think about it for a minute....our belief system took a practice the Romans used against scum of the earth, common criminals, and turned it into our most triumphant moment - that moment when God, acting as one who is Fully Human and Fully Divine - conquered death.

St. Paul reminded the Phillipians that Jesus ‘Though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave’.  

In his letter to the Church, St. Paul reminds us how extraordinary the Crucifixion was for us.  Not only did God humble Himself for His creatures, the Creator allowed the greatest evil ever known to take place - Deicide - so that we could be saved. 

This week Christians celebrate something that should not even be remembered: the execution of a Jewish man by a frustrated Roman career politician in a dusty outpost of the empire.  We will gather together for prayer, we will Baptize and Confirm new members of the Church and they will get to participate in the Eucharistic Meal for the first time.  We will read the Great Story of Our Family from Holy Scripture, commemorate the love of the Saints - especially those who were so affected by the events of that time that they willingly went to their DEATH rather than renounce their experience.  These people, many of them just simple folk like me (working hard to keep body and soul together, as my late father would say) died protecting that piece of bread from being desecrated.

Why?

Because some of them had been there in the Upper Room that night and others had been TAUGHT what happened in the Upper Room that night..and they believed that the piece of bread, the cup of wine is transformed into the Body, Blood, Soul and DIVINITY of Jesus Christ Himself.

This is Holy Week.  The Week that makes my life matter, my hard work to bring the Truth to children and adults matter, the week that puts my physical and mental and emotional suffering in the world into perspective and gives it meaning.  It is the week when being me, a Catholic Out Loud, is put to the test.

This is Holy Week.  May the Light of Christ and His Church illuminate the real world for you.











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