Holy Week is supposed to begin with hosannas and palm waving, energy and praise.
Some years, though, I find myself starting Holy Week with a sense of exhaustion. This Lent, which I had hoped would be one of slow and gentle spiritual growth, maybe even rest and restoration, has been the opposite. Everything in my world has needed more of me, rather than less, and I began Holy Week feeling depleted and tired.
But there’s space for that kind of Holy Week, too. We don’t need to begin the holiest week of the year at our best. It comes either way. And maybe we’re prepared to receive the risen Jesus in a way we can’t quite see.
Soon we will be following Jesus through His passion, as he finds himself facing the loneliness of being rejected by friends, taking on unbearable suffering, and ultimately dying on the cross. We are as ready as we need to be.
Maybe this has been an extraordinary Lent for you, and you are exhilarated to enter the Holy Triduum. Maybe it’s been a Lent where you’ve fallen again and again but picked yourself up. Maybe the losses and obstacles that have come your way have been surprising and seemingly insurmountable.
Wherever we are on our individual Lenten journeys, there is a place for us at the table with Jesus. We can break bread with Him, cry with Him in the garden, cringe as His friends turn their backs on Him, lean into carrying His cross with him, or sit at the foot of His cross, watching, waiting, and praying.
The stories of this week are open to us in every way, and there is room for each of us to enter in — or watch from a distance, just as Jesus’ friends did. Maybe this week we will encounter a single passage that helps us make sense of — or see beyond — our everyday experiences. Maybe we will notice something different this year that we never quite picked up on before — Peter’s actions or how Simon of Cyrene stepped forward or how Veronica wiped Jesus’ face. Maybe we will let the verses of “Were You There” wash over us and know Jesus’ presence and love.
We don’t need to have had the best 40 days of our lives to be ready for this moment. Jesus is taking this journey and dying for each of us. We just need to join Him, however we are and wherever we are, and know He is taking all of this on for and with us.
He invites us along as much or as little as we are able to be with Him.
Let’s pray for one another as we enter into these holiest days of the year, knowing that at the end lies the most extraordinary rejoicing.
Linking up with Rosie and other bloggers sharing about Holy Week for her “Just Because” link-up.
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