Holy Week begins with “Hosannas” on Sunday and ends with “Crucify Hims” on Friday.
What fickleness! What fecklessness!
We are all like this when it comes to following Jesus. We try to avoid sin, ask forgiveness when we do sin, and accept grace. However, we vacillate between wanting Him and rejecting Him. We can’t make up our minds whether we hold Him in regard or if we are going to sin regardless of the consequences to our relationship to Him and the state of our immortal souls.
Then, there’s the whole focus on the Cross this week. We hate to be reminded that Jesus tells us that we must pick up our cross and follow Him. Jesus didn’t just pick up His cross though. He embraced it. He kissed it.
And what do we do when God sends us a little bit of suffering. ( I truly believe that there is no comparison with our sufferings and the brutality of being crucified; not even mentioning the cruelty of the scourging and crowning with thorns.) We whine and ask Him to take our suffering away as quickly as possible. Holy Week should remind us that we all are going to have our crosses to bear. How do we accept them? Do we embrace our suffering with all the love for Christ that we can because we know that Easter Sunday always follows Good Friday?
I leave you with a wonderful quote from the Cure de Ars, St. John Vianney. I plan on using this all week long to remind me of what the the Christian life is really all about.
“There is no doubt about it: a person who loves pleasure, who seeks comfort, who flies from anything that might spell suffering, who is over-anxious, who complains, who blames, and who becomes impatient at the least little thing which does not go his way–a person like that is a Christian only in name; he is only a dishonour to his religion, for Jesus Christ has said so: Anyone who wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross every day of his life, and follow me.” ~St. John Vianney
Dr. Linda L. Powell 