Seeing With The Heart

 

It’s Holy Week, and I will spend more time with Jesus, to understand more what He did, and why.  It’s not just reading words about what He did but seeing it in my heart.  To know more what He did and why, is to know HIM more.

Last week, I had noticed in the chapel cupola these words encircling the ceiling: “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain.”  The word “slain” jumped out at me at first, because I knew that people died, even willingly, but someone who is slain died wrongly; some law has been broken.  Lambs are butchered, but that word wasn’t used either, because it would infer that Lamb of God to be just another animal.  He’s way more than that. 

Today, I noticed the word “Who”.  In my brain I had perceived “The lamb which was slain.”  A lamb is an animal, a thing which had something happen to it, but a “Who” is a person, not a thing. That phrase, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain”, which is written above the crucifix on the wall and the Sacred Host on the altar, now helps me see these two with a much deeper understanding --- in my heart. He chose to permit both those awesome events, an awesome God beyond understanding choosing to show His humility beyond understanding, dying and then remaining with us always.  I think the word “LOVE”, as beyond the understanding of Peter and the apostles, explains that humility.

 

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Reading the Gospels this Holy Week, and the reflections in The Better Part (by Fr. Bartunek), I’m also getting some “aha” moments.  Seeing new depth of meaning in the words of the Gospel helps me understand the events which happened better, like when Judas was at the Last Supper table.  In John 13 it says “At that instant, after Judas had taken the (dipped) bread, Satan entered him. … As soon as Judas had taken the piece of bread he went out.  Night had fallen.”  I thought I understood what that last sentence meant: it was evening, and time for the meal to continue and then for Jesus to head to the garden.  Fr. Bartunek wrote in his commentary, however, that Jesus is the Light of the World.  When Satan enters Judas, night had fallen; the light of Jesus had gone out of him.

These and other commentaries give me much to reflect on this Holy Week, about what happened, and why.  I’ll think about those things as I watch my three favorite Holy Week movies, and I take down my Christmas tree and decorations.  Soon it will be time to celebrate Jesus’ re-birth at Easter, seeing that miracle with my heart.