Meditation
Holy Week Retreat
29 March 2024
St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas
I love the next three mornings. Nothing feels normal. Everything seems different. You know you're a liturgical warrior, or addict, when you're bothered by subtle changes in the liturgy. Today, the change is much more dramatic. We see the empty sanctuary before us. We look at the remnants of the garden of agony. Everything is empty. Jesus is gone. They have taken my Lord, and I don't know where they put him. A time will come when the bridegroom is taken from you, and on that day you will fast.
Today is that day.
I love the next three mornings, for nothing is normal. These three days are different because we try as we might to take nothing for granted. The most dramatic moment in human history, the most intense news, the axis of the ultimate battle between life and death, is re-presented now. The story is played out before our eyes and our hearts. That's liturgy at its best, as a space is opened up for us to participate in the mysteries that transform all reality.
Last night we experienced the depth of love. Today the terrible and wonderful reality of death. Tomorrow the dramatic silence, of waiting to see what will happen. Sunday the proclamation of the biggest upset our world has ever seen. What a gift these days are, to have a time and space to enter deeply into the story of how things really are.
You know the drama of today well. God is dead, and I killed him. Death is certain, and those who avoid it, try to escape from it, or hide from it, will never be able to face life as it really is, will never suffer reality courageously, will never write a great story with their lives.
Today is an unbelievable day. The one thing God can't do is die. He is immortal. Yet there He is - dead, and I killed him. What in the hell is going on? And of course, that's the whole point of it. Hell is being confronted, face to face.
The passion of our Lord gets personal when I look into my soul, and realize that ultimately, I am one of two characters. I am the killer, or I choose to die. At this moment, you might be in the lukewarm messy middle, and that's fine, but really it's not. Living with real passion, especially on Passion Friday, means that I am in anguish until my real story is accomplished. Jesus talks about this hour a lot, a chapter of my story when I pass over passionately with Jesus, for Jesus, through Jesus, who has opened up this sacred space for my passion to participate in something more.
Why do I kill? Well that's easy, tongue in cheek. I kill because life is hard, suffering hurts, and it's just easier to numb out, check out and cancel anything that's too difficult to face. This is too hard, and I just want it all to be over.
Why do I suffer willingly? Because there is this promise, this hope, that when death is filled with love, it is defeated, and the gift of my life unto death is the new raw material for the Resurrection.
The point of today is to ask the Holy Spirit to burn like a fire and move you closer to your destiny. In the end, I am the killer, or I choose to die. The cross is where my life ends, or where it begins.
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