06 Apr Monday

Easter 041220

This is going to be a Holy Week. We can decide to follow Jesus or the insanity of U.S. culture, politics, and economics at this moment. This is the week that will call everything into question, for we now have more questions than ever. In our newfound isolation and sheltering, we have a rich opportunity to turn aside from earthly things and think prayerful about the things of heaven. As life gets stripped down to its bare bones, we will discover what we are really made of, and we will know like never before in our lifetimes, that we are in the same spiritual and psychological space as the disciples.

I am going to begin with the “Alleluia” preceding the gospel. It is strange, because its proclamation is about a sacrificial death; even in that moment of abundant joy, we remain confronted with this death, which typically avoid talking or thinking about at all. More than that, in the very next part of the versicle is the invitation to feast! This announcement and invitation gets to the heart of the Paschal Mystery. How to hold both of these at each end of each spectrum. Both of these get to the core of the human condition.

The Tridentine Catholic will continue to focus on the sacrifice, the more gory the better, while the John XXIII Catholic looks for the joy in the divine and holy presence of God in our lives. Yet why does God have this weakness for the human person? This just can’t merely be our projection onto our contrived divinity. There’s something deeper here that arises from our human capacity for awe and wonder, which in fact we do share with the all the animal and plant domains.