Motivation Monday - A Monday to Experience Holy Week Like Never Before
“Holy Week gives ushers in the opportunity for something new to rise in us.
Maybe this year our Holy Week will be a game-changer for all the Holy Weeks to come.
If death could not keep Christ in His grave, neither will an anxious world bury us in ours.
Oh death, where is your victory? O grave, where is your sting?
We are created to live and then to be reborn.
”
The phenomena of people returning to church on Easter and the week leading up to it never ceases to amaze me. So many experience a sudden spark in holy obligation to show up in a place where they might be seen by God and therefore be blessed for the rest of a year spent away from organized religious gatherings. Perhaps the myth that experiencing the holy and divine presence of God only happens in church once a year drives this trend.
So many have gotten it wrong.
I myself have gotten it wrong as well. I have mistaken Holy Week as tied to the practices of doing it right by being in the right place and the right time, where somehow God might see me.
How wrong I have been.
Holy Week never really did happen in the church
as much as it was experienced
in the lives of people in the church.
Perhaps this is the year to rediscover that. Perhaps this year we experience individual and collective epiphanies that Holy Week is about more than walking through the story of what happened to Jesus.
Perhaps as we journey with Jesus from Palm Sunday with our Hosanna’s ringing loud and clear, to Maundy Thursday where he washed his friends’ feet and declared His dying love, to Good Friday and the scandalous Cross, into Saturday and the silence that fell across heaven and earth, and then witness His glorious Resurrection on Sunday, we realize that what is happening to us is of utmost importance as we track with what is happening to Jesus. It’s about giving thanks for and experiencing Jesus himself walking with us through the Holy Week of our life. We all experience more than one Holy Week every year.
Just because we are living in a world we could not have imagined, a world turned upside down on its axis, it does not present a barrier to Holy Week.
Perhaps the tumult and chaos of the world is and has been, our Holy Week.
We don’t need to try and make Holy Week “normal” or like previous years before the world as we knew it changed.
We don’t need to grieve that just because the world is unrecognizable and even threatening to stability and well-being, it doesn’t mean we are not able to still wash others’ feet, or break bread together, or sing, ‘the wonderful cross’ in harmony. It doesn’t mean that we are any less able to participate in the most significant week of the liturgical year.
We can experience and connect to Holy Week,
not in spite of what is happening,
but through what is happening.
Michael Marsh says it like this:
Look into the tumult and you’ll see triumphant palm waving that has given way to loss and brokenness. You’ll see humble and selfless acts of love. You’ll see feet being washed even when shoes and socks are never removed. You’ll see not only the deaths of people, but the deaths of life as it used to be, plans and routines, illusions, exceptionalism, and self-sufficiency. The peoples of the earth really have been made of one blood. You’ll see people waiting in the emptiness, loneliness, and darkness of Holy Saturday wondering, “How long, O Lord?” And who among us doesn’t know what that is like?
Look into the craziness and you’ll see Holy Week. It has never been more real than it is this year.
With every illness, there is the possibility of healing. With every separation from friends and family there is the tie that binds us across physical isolation and distance. With every dying lies the possibility of resurrection life, of something new, better than was the seed that went into the ground.
Holy Week gives ushers in the opportunity for something new to rise in us.
Maybe this year our Holy Week will be a game-changer for all the Holy Weeks to come.
If death could not keep Christ in His grave, neither will an anxious world bury us in ours.
Oh death, where is your victory? O grave, where is your sting?
We are created to live and then to be reborn.
This can only happen when we surrender our lives to allow the Resurrection Life to live in us and through us. This can only happen when we are willing to die to all that keeps us stuck in a story of despair and fear, so we can rise to rebirth into a new story where the last chapter is just the beginning.
Watch for it. Wait for it. Keep vigil. “It will happen in a moment, in the blink of an eye, when the last trumpet is blown. For when the trumpet sounds, those who have died will be raised to live forever. And we who are living will also be transformed.” (I Corinthians 15:52)
Endeavour to cradle each day like a Holy Day, starting today, and always. Notice it. Watch how the life breath of the Holy Spirit can blow fresh wind into your heart and carry you home.
May I encourage you to walk through this Holy Week with awe and wonder and hope. John O’Donohue reminds us of the profound sacredness in every moment and every day we live.
“We seldom notice how each day is a holy place Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens, transforming our broken fragments Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.”
May you live deep into the ordinary extraordinary days of your Holy Week, now and forever.
I believe in you.
Cathie