Great Week: then and now

Every time Great Week comes round, it brings with it a different feel for life. You think that the whole world’s concentrated on the Church, with Christ at the center. That everything stops with ‘Today is hanged…’. How much is said in churches, how many texts- theological, literary and so on- have been written about these days.

Great Week! The path to Easter. After the pain, the sorrow, the melancholy, you come to the feast of Resurrection night. Without haste, but also without the long, drawn-out sentimentality which dilutes the experience. The events of the Lord’s Passion are presented simply, as a movement to be felt in our hearts. Events which occurred in place and time are presented as here and now. When Christ told his disciples to celebrate the Divine Eucharist ‘in remembrance’, it has the meaning of the repetition of those events in the Holy Spirit, though they took place two thousand years ago.

‘Today is hanged’ is true! Because today, too, Christ is betrayed, abandoned, crucified and he dies. Christ doesn’t walk through history alone. He’s accompanied by all those who want to become Christians, those who freely and consciously ‘deny themselves and take up their cross’. The decision isn’t always so resolute, however, nor is our will so firm. ‘My sin is ever before me’ expresses the reality of our self, which alters, becomes upset, abandons, comes and goes. With the exception of our Lady, who hasn’t gone through phases?

Great Week: our judgement, our mirror. The dynamic of the love of our God. The manifestation of his perfect humility, since he surrendered into the hands of his enemies, without resistance, praying for their forgiveness. He surrendered to his executioners, to his disciples, to the weak and to the sinners. Without resistance, willingly and lovingly.

Great Week: for believers and non-believers. For those near and far. For the righteous and the sinners. For those for whom it marks a new start in life and for those for whom it’s a welcome break from routine. For those who have fasted and those who haven’t. For those who understand the events and for those who get no further than the surface. For everyone.

‘When Christ comes to his voluntary suffering’ on behalf of the whole world, he becomes our Savior. He dies, that we may live. He offers what we desire: eternal life. From now, not in terms of time but of quality. What we’ve been seeking in the passions, in material goods, in fame, in money and in pleasures, we find here in the suffering and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We realize this when we find him.

Great Week: from the Bridegroom, to the Cross, to the Winding-Sheet, to ‘Arise, God’ and to ‘Christ has risen’. Every day, something important, and great. Hence Great Week.

‘Come, Lord, to my feeble and cold heart and transform it into a locus of your presence, so that, insofar as it’s possible for us, I may experience your path to the cross and resurrection’.