It is Holy Week. It is the most intense time of our Church year.
Hard work is the only way to describe what we do during Holy Week.
In these few days we once again tell the story of the last days of Jesus. We walk with him in his great struggles to be faithful to God the Father and his tremendous patience with his disciples, who half -he-time do not appear to know what was going on.
But when we pray and meditate over the sufferings of Jesus, we must also be very pro-active. We must be bringing to these Gospel stories the suffering and violence that people around us are suffering right now.
This is not written down in the gospel accounts of the suffering of Jesus but the people of the Church have firmly believed and practiced an understanding that whenever another human being suffers at the hands of someone else, the crucifixion of Jesus happens all over again. This is not a story of the distant past. It is being lived out in our own world, today.
This Holy Week bring all the ordinary people who have suffered so greatly at the hands of war. Bring all the people who have had the houses, school and hospitals bombed; the people of the Ukraine, Gaza, Iran and the Sudan. Bring all the pictures you have witnessed in the news media, all the apartment buildings and schools – bombed and flattened to the ground! Bring the suffering of all these little people.
Bring all the people who have been the victims of scammers. The people who were trusting of what they thought was a legitimate request, only to find that they had been robbed by a scammer.
Bring all the people who need care in our nursing homes. No one comes to visit them or even enquires how they are doing. Bring the great pain of loneliness that pervades their life. It is one of the greatest pain we can endure in this life.
Bring your own cancer diagnosis to the cross of Jesus. Your own pain and confusion need support and healing.
Bring all the pain of the world to this Holy Week. Allow the self-giving of Jesus to be shared with the suffering of our contemporary human beings.
May your prayer be deepened this Holy Week.
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