That Was the Week That Is!!!!!!!!!!
The disciples of Jesus enter Holy Week this weekend as we celebrate our participation in the Paschal Mystery of the Lord. From Thursday evening through Sunday evening, in the Easter Triduum (3 days), we proclaim the Death and the Resurrection of the Lord.
We live in a culture that has been described as a “therapeutic, individualistic” culture. The axiom is “I am who I am”. People feel a malaise at times. More and more, many seek a panacea in therapy. Wise people rejoice in the gifts of healing provided by psychotherapy. However, we must remember that we are individuals created in community. Most Catholic psychotherapists themselves urge us to remember that they do not offer cure- alls. In a society that stresses the individual at the expense of community, we need to remember that individual therapy is an answer, not the Answer.
We are part of a community as well, with which we should identify in a healthy fashion. Here the operative axiom is “We are who we are”. We rejoice in our membership in the Catholic community, in our American citizenship, our ethnic and racial backgrounds, etc. Yet, when such identities become security blankets if we find them as the absolutes of life (as opposed to YHWH, the Father of Jesus, the God of Life, the God of Mystery), we will someday become disappointed and disillusioned.
The Paschal Mystery focuses our attention to our belief that the operative axiom for all is found in the Transcendent, viz., the Mystery of God, in which we all participate. Now the operative, all inclusive axiom is God’s self-identification, “I am Who am.” This axiom for followers of Jesus subsumes and relativizes other axioms.
Our God is revealed in the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, His salvific sharing in our life and death. We all experience disillusionment, disappointment, betrayal, accident, sickness and suffering in our lives. The Cross takes a variety of shapes and sizes. Such crosses can become opportunities for growth in faith and strength when we accept them as part of our participation in them as part of the Mystery revealed in the death and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, into Which we are all baptized.
As we hear Jesus’ dying words this week twice, they reflect in a human dichotomy what Catholics feel in our lives. In Mark on Palm Sunday, Jesus dies with the words of Psalm 22 on His lips, “My God, my God, why have You abandoned me?” (Have you ever said that?)
We think now that St Mark combined one (and possibly, two) extended accounts of the death of Jesus. He also touched up the narrative with references from the Hebrew Bible (such as our first reading today, the Suffering Servant Poems) with Psalm 22 (our Responsorial Psalm today) and Psalm 69.
However, recently, a manuscript was discovered in a synagogue in the Mid East which spoke of the liturgy which the synagogue followed for the Day of Atonement, viz., Yom Kippur. In the manuscript was a description of a scapegoat (literally a goat) that was wrapped around in thorns in either a red or purple cloth. As the scapegoat, which bore the sins of the community was driven out of the synagogue and town, Jewish penitents seeking forgiveness for their own sins would spit upon the scapegoat or beat it with a reed. This Jewish liturgy gives a further insight into what St Mark is describing in the Death of the Messiah in today’s Gospel. The first Christians probably would have been familiar with the Jewish liturgy of Yom Kippur and recognized in St Mark’s account the similar pattern in the death of Jesus.
In John, on Good Friday, Jesus dies with these words on His lips, “It is consummated”. When Jesus gave up His Spirit, it was more than breathing His last breath!!What was the end was actually the beginning. Who knows the Mind of God? The Paschal Mystery is infinitely knowable and unknowable at the same time. Isn’t it wonderful?
Entering into Holy Week as we prepare for the Easter Triduum, we ask Jesus for the grace to see the axioms, “I am who I am” and “we are who we are” relativized by the “Name of YHWH, I am Who am”, Who is self-revealed in the salvific death and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. 040112 AD jfq
