The Generosity of Holy Week

Dear Friends,

This week, from Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion to the Easter Vigil next Saturday evening, is, without doubt, a week of profound generosity or lack of it.

Above all, Jesus, Word of God made flesh, gives Himself for the life of the world – its salvation and fulfillment. Jesus gives His all. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Satan hovers in the background once more and Satan doesn’t stand a chance. He is gone and Jesus places himself, without distraction, into the arms of His Father. “Yes!” he echoes the words of his mother, Mary. “Yes. I will.” Jesus gives himself over to these next hours with exceptional generosity. He withholds nothing.

All along the way to the cross, He meets people who are challenged to be generous as He is generous. Simon of Cyrene felt the flat of the soldier’s sword on his shoulder. Everyone under Roman rule knew that gesture meant that the person under the blade was to serve in some way. Simon did as he was told. But the demand on him grew into a generosity that made him act lovingly and wholeheartedly in carrying Jesus’ cross. Simon’s sons were later named as remarkable members of the early Church (Mark 15.21). They could only get that love, that fire, through following their own father’s generosity. Dismas, the good thief hanging to one side of Jesus, is generous with his words to Jesus. They are like balm for his wounds. Generosity does this. It makes tenderness blossom where there has been no awareness or caring. The other thief has not a generous bone in his body. His words are harsh. I wonder if anyone had ever been generous to him.

After his denial of Jesus three times, Peter wept. He did what he did not ever believe he would do. Yet, Jesus was generous to Peter in return. Never rejected by Jesus, Peter’s holiness was watered by his tears, generously flowing to wash him clean. It could also have been so with Judas. Whatever motivated Judas to betray Jesus, it could have been overcome. Judas needed to be generous in accepting Jesus’ forgiveness in the aftermath of his betrayal, but he couldn’t.

Mary, Jesus’ mother, stood beneath the cross. She may well have wondered if she had anything left to give. But her Son found something both surprising and hope-filled. With the generosity of a God-Son, Jesus gave Mary and John to each other to love and support in the years ahead. Now Jesus had given almost all away. He had only a few words left and he flung them out into the universe. “It is finished,” Jesus cried out (John 19.30). He shared his victory in that moment with all of us.

After Jesus’ death, Joseph of Arimathea stepped out of the shadows. He had been a secret believer in Jesus, but he had judged that too much was at stake for him to speak up sooner. Now he had the courage to be generous with his presence before the Romans, generous with his own tomb. He claimed the body of Jesus and took it for burial (Luke 23.50-53). The women bought costly spices and oils to prepare Jesus’ body for entombment. From what possible sources had they found money to spend so generously so that Jesus might be ready to enter the beyond?

For Jesus, it is finished. For us, not yet. What will we be and do this Holy Week? Will we be generous with our time to be with Jesus in prayer? Will we carry the cross of others? Wipe their faces? Say tender words to them? Weep with them? Wonder with them?

~Sister Joan Sobala

Preparing for the Magnitude of Holy Week

Sunday April 3, 2022

Dear Friends,

                 Stand at the edge of the scene. The woman’s accusers made her stand there- in front of everyone. A non- person. A thing used to trap Jesus. A woman ostensibly caught in the act of adultery. She stands before Jesus alone. No man is presented with her. Only this woman awaiting the condemnation of Jesus that would lead to her death.

                The stones were being gathered, but Jesus had no use for stones or the cleverness of the learned who knew how to manipulate the law.

                Tracing his finger in the sand, Jesus gave everyone time to cool dawn, to rethink their part in this drama. Then he straightened up. Authority fell like a mantle, softly on his shoulders and enfolded this misused woman.

                “Has no one condemned you?” (John 8.10) “No one,” she answered. (John 8 .11) Don’t you wonder what was in her voice. Surprise?” No one, sir.” Wonder? “No one, sir.” Gratitude? “No one, sir.” “Go ,” he told her, “Avoid this sin.”(John 8.11)

                From this day forward, the woman would carry the strength and weakness of the past with her.

                “It is not that I have reached the goal,” Paul says in the letter to the Philippians today. “It is not that I have finished my course, but I am racing to reach it.”

                There is more ahead. More for Paul and the so- called adulterous woman. More for Jesus and more for us. Next week, we plunge into the Passion. This week and last, our readings have been preparing us to open ourselves to the magnitude of Holy Week. The Prodigal Father, the Adulterous Woman, the Passion of Christ all set before us an agenda:

                Will hurting, wrong, wronged people find in our believing community the acceptance that enables them to continue life’s journey or will we turn away the accused and condemned as beyond hope, comfort, love or salvation?

                Hurting, wrong or wronged people. We know them. The man who made an error in judgement and we call it malicious, the woman who had an abortion, the legislator who chose gain rather than justice, our brother who left home in anger twenty years ago, the person who choses self-serving ways instead of a generous use of one’s talents for others.

                Will we accept these people and others like them? When they ask us “has no one condemned us?”, will we answer “No one!”  Will we accept ourselves as being like them? And go on?

                Because God does accept us and bids us go on. That’s today’s message framed in the words of Isaiah: “Remember not the events of the past – the things of long ago, consider not.

                See, I am doing something new! Now it springs forth!
                                       Do you not perceive it? “

                The newness that Jesus offered in woman in todays Gospel is a presage of Easter. When all things will be transformed – will be made new. Come! Let’s go on together.

~Sister Joan Sobala