Palm Sunday/Good Friday: What we just heard: We let the drama unfold, and let it have its way with us. We will then find ourselves inside that story, and we might begin to notice how that story is taking place all around us.
The agony of Christ in the garden offers us a meditation on all kinds of human struggles. But, we are no mere readers or spectators. We are in the garden too. We can see our own vulnerability and struggles mirrored in Jesus’ agony.
We like control; God, it seems, loves vulnerability. If we haven’t touched and united with the vulnerable place within us, we’re normally projecting seeming invulnerability outside and judging others for their weakness.
Every life ever lived and every death ever died are gathered up in the last breath of Jesus at Golgotha. Every one of them and all of them together are present, as well, in the tomb.
We also receive anew the salvation of Jesus Christ today because we are sinners and need salvation.
Fleming Rutledge in her book, The Bible and the New York Times, tells the story of a woman in her church who would not come to church on Palm Sunday and hear the Passion Narrative. This woman couldn't stand being asked to shout "Crucify him! Crucify him! " “I just can't do it," the woman explained. Rutledge says, "I always felt very sad for her. She had missed the whole point....it was very important to her to think of herself as one of the righteous. She could not confront her own darkness. How sad this is. If she but knew it, there is great power in the act of repentance."
Jesus said to Saint Faustina: “My daughter, when I was before Herod, I obtained a grace for you; namely, that you would be able to rise above human scorn and follow faithfully in My footsteps. Be silent when they do not want to acknowledge your truth, because it is then that you speak more eloquently.”
Jesus quotes the beginning of Psalm 22 on the cross. It’s a lament Psalm, by which he both identifies with the feeling of being abandoned and also the Todah, which is the thanksgiving at the end of the Psalm which speaks of how the Lord would deliver him. And through him, us.
