Living Holy Week

It is Holy Week, a beautiful somber week of walking spiritually with Jesus on the painful road to Calvary. I have mentioned before how Spiritual Fasting is simply snugging under the cross with Jesus so that He can help us with our struggles and problems. It is in this space that He will help us fast and pray.

It is in re-living the Stations of the Cross that we reach the Crucifixion and recall how Jesus, fully human and fully divine, hung on the cross to free all of us. He offered Himself for all our sins of humanity. He traded His life for our lives so that we could be free to worship Him. We are free. But sometimes we accidentally drift away in our busyness. God tells us that we only need to reach back and offer Him ourselves once again. He wants all our weaknesses and strengths. He wants to heal it all, especially this Holy Week. We do not need to hang on the cross like He did – just reach back to Him.

I like to read the same books every Lent and Advent. In one of those books, Death on a Friday Afternoon, Richard Neuhaus says,

“From God’s side, so to speak, it was always Love all the way, the failure was on our side.”

Why do we do that? Why do we fail to love Him in our humanness? I guess therein lies the battle. A winnable war I might add.

The book is so profound and seems to state that because of Good Friday, there is absolutely no one in any circumstance that cannot reach back to Him now. He is here for the taking.

So, this week, we understand that the sacrifice has been made. We need only to reach back and claim it as our own. Then step up in moral courage and grasp Him.

It’s going to take discomfort. Don’t worry about understanding the depths of it. Or understanding it at all. You never really will. Just carve out a little tiny piece of His cross for yourself. Carry it with you in Faith so that your life and love, offered for others, will be totally free.

May God bless you always.