Walking with Christ
This week we embark on a solemn and momentous journey. We are walking with Christ.
We are the crowd that sing Hosanna, wave palms and cast garments as he rides on a colt. Later that week, as we prepare for the supper together, Jesus washes our feet and commands us to wash the feet of each other. We sit with him at table as he breaks the bread and gives it to us saying: “This is my body, which is for you.” He then shares the cup with us saying: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.”
Jesus takes us out into the night, to the garden on the Mount of Olives. He asks us to pray that we may not enter into temptation and we hear him praying: “Father, if you are willing, move this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done.” But he finds us sleeping for sorrow. We run when he is arrested and betrayed by one of his friends. Later, we creep back to the house of the High Priest and warm our hands in the courtyard where we see and hear Peter deny him three times. Next day we stand in the courtyard of the Praetorium before Pilate. We are among the crowd that cry, “Crucify Him.” We follow the crowd accompanying Jesus as he drags his cross to Golgotha, the place of the skull. He is bloodied, battered and bruised. We stand with his mother Mary and his beloved disciple, John — or do we stand with those who look on as they crucify him?
We hear him cry, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” We hear the promise he made to one of the criminals crucified with him: “Today you will be with me in paradise.” We look on, as he cries in a loud voice, “Father into your hands I commit my spirit,” and breathes his last breath. We help Joseph of Arimathea take the body of Jesus down from the cross and wrap it in a linen shroud and, with him, we lay it in a tomb cut in stone.
Pope Leo the Great said:
In him we all died and were buried and raised to life again. Because he shared our manhood, we are admitted to God‘s pardon and peace and given the right to glory in the power of our Saviour who wrestled with our insolent enemy in the weakness of our own flesh and so made over his victory to those in his flesh he had gained it.
Next Saturday we keep solemn vigil, bless new fire, bring light into darkness and hear the story of salvation. We bless the water that will be used to bring to birth four catechumens through baptism, and we welcome others into the fullness of the Catholic Church through Confirmation and Holy Communion.
As we contemplate Christ’s love for us, expressed in his crucifixion, may it give us hope that our world might be redeemed and transformed by that love, and may it show us the way from cross to resurrection, from despair to hope, from death to new life, into beloved community and a world created anew.
