Holy Thursday – Unique Day within Difficult Week

-


Holy Week is a complex time. I am finally at a place where I can say, without guilt, that it is not my favourite of weeks in the liturgical year. I love Holy Thursday and believe it is the most beautiful and meaningful liturgy of the year. I also rejoice with all others who sing Alleluia on Easter Sunday. Such joy!! However, beginning with Palm Sunday I feel a growing sense of dis-ease. This year I did not recognize it until Tuesday of Holy Week when I realized I was on edge and cranky and definitely not at ease. Isn’t Holy Week supposed to be a week to willingly enter into the events and the spirituality of this special week?  Haven’t we all been told that a good Holy Week preparation will enhance the Easter Sunday experience? Isn’t there a piety that should be entered into and experienced during Holy Week? That may be so for some, but for me it is an uncomfortable week, if not difficult. Starting with Palm Sunday where the passion of Jesus, without the happy ending is told full out and complete. The hard part for me is that it begins with a whole group of people, seemingly carried away with group think. The gospel reading for Palm Sunday is a hard story to hear, read and contemplate. It is full of abandonment, betrayal, violence and agony, until Jesus dies. We have moments of reprieve from the violence with the great faith and love of Mary Magdalene and Mary, Jesus' mother.

The daily readings of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday seem to hold a mirror up to our own souls with each of the disciples who profess to love and follow Jesus only to sell him out or deny him. The disciples who falter in their profession of faith toward Jesus are me! They bring to life our own shadow sides. We intimately know those sides of us, and we know how secret and how buried they are. We know how easily our shadow sides can rise up and surprise us at times and how we wish they did not exist. But they do. 

Then comes Holy Thursday and what a relief it is to enter into love. We are not watching our alter egos betray and deny Jesus, and observe Him seemingly responding passively. It is not passive but loving and freeing and inviting. I don’t like it. I prefer to think of myself as faithful and devoted.   Yet each reading and each reflection seems to point to where I am not. Holy Thursday brings incomprehensible love and an understanding that Jesus understands and loves us. Loves us …..anyway…. and in spite of. Who cannot love Holy Thursday. We have the key to overcoming our shadow impulses by getting ourselves out of the way and focusing on loving the other. Serving each other and putting their welfare ahead of ours is the key to help our dis-ease.

Thanks to Fran Duffy – for her words and for her photo taken at QHP two years ago.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Qu’Appelle House of Prayer – September 3, 1995 - 2020

-
Image
  “These I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer ……   For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”    [Isaiah 56:7] Photo taken by Nancy Trapp This vision of Isaiah has been lived here in the Qu’Appelle Valley, as many places elsewhere, for 25 years today.   What follows are some of the times being gratefully remembered today.   Although the account is lengthy, many more significant dates have been left out.   It is a day to be thankful for so very many hundreds and thousands of people, beginning with the Oblates of Mary Immaculate and the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary.   We are most thankful for the many who have come here, for the untold number of generous benefactors, for so many volunteers and for the people of this part of the Qu’Appelle Valley and elsewhere who have consistently, faithfully supported the life and ministry of this place. Glenn Zimmer, OMI and Chantelle ...
Read more

Pondering Summers Past

-
Image
Just a little something to warm you up a little as the weather gets cooler. These two lovely videos capture the essence of summer's beauty at the House of Prayer. Thanks Lauri Sthamann for your delicate eye that grants our eyes a feast!  Although summer has slipped away, your lovely work gives us hope for more summers to come!  Enjoy everyone!
Read more

Sister Margaret, SNJM Second Anniversary of Entering Eternal Life ~~ April 24, 2019 – 2021

-
Image
Throughout the past weekend we have been so very aware of the life, death and rising of Margaret Dick.   And so have very many others through cards, emails, texts, telephone calls and personal contact.   We are so thankful to each and every one, for every word and loving sentiment.  The highlight of the weekend Memorial (including a visual display honoring Margaret in chapel) was the Fourth Sunday of Easter celebrated Saturday afternoon;   15 gathered to remember and to give thanks.   It was Good Shepherd Sunday.   In John’s Gospel, Ch 10, the expression “lay down life” is repeated five times in only seven verses.   This was readily seen as a way to understand from a faith perspective how Margaret left this world.   And it was readily seen that giving one’s self away did not happen only two years ago, but was a long-time way of life for her; that is, to lay down her life so many times in so many ways throughout her nearly 82 years. Many of us no...
Read more