This is Holy Week

The Gospel today, Monday, has Judas asking: “Why not sell this oil for 300 days wages?”  He is in the presence of Jesus, Lazarus who had been raised from the dead, and Mary who was washing Jesus’ feet with the oil, and then wiping them with her hair.  Holy Week: With this Gospel we see the lesson of life, which will be put to us over and over again.  The lesson, the hard lesson, is: This life, as we see it with our eyes, is not all there is.  This life, as we live it each day, will have many joys --- which we should seek, as Judas did.  But this life is only a beginning to eternal life, and eternal life overlaps with this physical life --- and we must begin living our spiritual life even now, as Mary did.

Jesus, this week, is shown in His joys, in His sufferings, in His death, but His eternal life is shown also, and most definitely, at the end of the week in His Resurrection. His resurrection, His rising in eternal life, is the high point of His earthly life.  Holy Week is called that name because it is totally focused on that overlap of earthly and spiritual life.  They exist in us at the same time, but even as we grow old physically we must be growing in awareness of that eternal spiritual life within us.

For some of us we look at life as if we are growing a vegetable garden, and then at some point we look at all the ripe crops and say: “What is that?”  What is that??!!  Are you kidding?  Can’t you see?  That is why you tilled the soil all those years, you carried heavy water, you suffered in the hot sun to pull weeds.  That is the whole purpose of all those efforts.  During our life we may have had many joys, many sorrows, but they were not merely joys or sorrows with this earthly existence, our spiritual life was going on at the same time, learning, growing, with the help of our human joys and sufferings.

There is a purpose, an eternal spiritual purpose, to our human lives.  Sadly, we are so often overwhelmed by our earthly bodily feelings that we forget they have a greater purpose.  Joys, and sadness, are good things; they help us grow on the path to our eternal life.

I’ll be studying the Gospels this week, but for me a high point in those studies will be Holy Thursday night.  I am sure that Jesus, on that night, must have reflected on His earthly life, its joys, sorrows and purpose.  And in His sufferings that night He felt alone, with those who mocked Him, crowned Him with thorns, who didn’t know the spiritual Him which He had sought to reveal through His earthly life.  His friends were not there; the aloneness must have been the deepest darkness He ever felt.

We feel that way sometimes, alone in our sorrows.  That is why on Holy Thursday night one of the high points of my meditations is my reading and reflecting on the Gospel of John, Chapters 14 to 17.  These chapters are often described as the Last Supper Discourses.  They are not present in in the words of the other Gospel writers on the Last Supper, only in John, the beloved apostle.  Those chapters summarize Jesus’ life and its purpose.  They bring together Jesus’ earthly life and spiritual life, as He lived them together.  These chapters explain how physical and spiritual overlapped and worked together.  He was body; He was spirit; He was God.  And the key overlap, which united them all was love, and a trust in the Father.  Those two things helped Him get through His earthly life, with a focus on His spiritual one, especially at the end.  It is a great lesson for me, which I need to constantly re-read, to help me grow spiritually.

Jesus saw, on Holy Thursday night, that even in the worst suffering a human can undergo, there is a reason, and He was only alone from His human friends --- but He was never alone from the Father.  We need to see what Jesus saw, and see our life through His eyes.  There is a reason for this life, its joys and sorrows, and the reason is not, as Judas saw: “Let’s get more money; let’s be happy now.”

This is Holy Week, a time to learn to grow in holiness.