"A Soul Pain Shared."

Different Holy Week

“There is something okay about slowing down…We are experiencing a soul pain shared.”

Caroline Myss

          I woke this morning thinking about the fact that this is “Holy Week” and just how strange it will be for all Judeo-Christian religious people to spend it in isolation. Passover is Wednesday and with Thursday, we begin Easter weekend. As a child, I would have been excited about the Easter dress my mother or grandmother had made for me; and about getting a new pair of shoes, only the second pair allotted in a year. We would have just paraded with our palm fronds into church on Palm Sunday, put our Lent boxes on the altar and stuck spring flowers in the cross made of chicken wire. Holy Week is the most celebrated time in the liturgical calendar, and this year it will be historically different.

          Have we stopped long enough to think that perhaps the difference would be an improvement? Maybe we can now figure out what it’s all about—not about the new clothes, certainly, and not even about the celebration of Easter and the resurrection. What if we were to spend this week thinking about the meaning of this time of year. That we are witnessing, as we have every year, the blessing of new life, of the turning of the season, the return of the sun to the northern hemisphere, and renewal. Our spirits are lifted, and our hearts opened. Christ-consciousness is once again available to us if we are open to receiving it.

          Jesus of Nazareth was the embodiment of that consciousness. If we think about the character of the man Jesus, we know that he was gentle, honest, kind, and forgiving. He valued women as much as men and gathered little children to himself to bless them. We know that he taught a different way of life, not based upon rules that separate people into categories of clean and unclean, rich and poor, righteous or sinful, but instead, brought people together and humbled himself enough to wash their feet. We know that he required the same humility from his disciples, saying, “You feed them,” when more than five thousand had gathered in the wilderness to hear him teach. In other words, “You are here to serve them.” In Jesus ministry the washed and unwashed, the sick and broken, the Jew and gentile, were treated with the same kindness and respect, as beloved children. He sacrificed his own ego-needs because he loved them, and out of obedience to his calling.

          That’s what Holy Week is all about—sacrifice and obedience. This week, this year, we are given an opportunity to witness this in “real time.” Many lives will be lost to the coronavirus this week. Every state and almost every community will experience death. We are called to carry that cross through the streets of our cities and to witness their sacrifice. On the other side of this pandemic, there will be resurrection. Like a phoenix, we will rise from the ashes renewed, but changed, scarred. Hopefully, we are learning some important lessons through this sacrifice. And those lessons are not about new clothes and shiny new shoes. Easter will be different from now on. Different, and better.

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane