Let Us Become Like Palms and Olive Branches

Chanting the Liturgy of the Hours must be the most beautiful way to enter into Holy Week.  I am much grateful for that gift Luke is sharing with our parish.  Because of it, I found myself reflecting on the second reading in today's Office of Readings which comes from a sermon by Saint Andrew of Crete.  Its words struck deeply into my heart, reflecting there some thoughts stirring there of late.  I want to share some of them with you:

"Let us go together to meet Christ on the Mount of Olives.  Today He returns from Bethany and proceeds of His own free will toward His holy and blessed passion, to consummate the mystery of our salvation."

What a beautiful phrase: to consummate the mystery of our salvation of His own free will.  Yes, His own free will.

Sometimes perhaps we forget—or merely do not understand—how willingly He goes into the suffering of His passion. It is easier to think that He did it because He had to do it. For who could possibly choose to suffer so much pain by His own free will? Who would choose to embrace the Cross? Surely only the One who loves more deeply than we can understand—who loves more deeply than we can bear.

How then do we respond?

"Let us run to accompany Him as He hastens toward Jerusalem, and imitate those who met Him then, not by covering His path with garments, olive branches or palms, but by doing all we can to prostrate ourselves before Him by being humble and by trying to live as He would wish.  Then we shall be able to receive the Word at His coming, and God, whom no limits can contain, will be within us.

"In His humility Christ entered the dark regions of our fallen world and He is glad that He became so humble for our sake...."

Humility.

It is the foundation of all the virtues, the foundation of freedom, and the foundation of joy.  Yet somehow it is the most difficult of the virtues to embrace in more than mind's intellectual assent.

Why?

I think it is because we fear our own vulnerability—our own woundedness.  We try in every way possible to shore ourselves up lest we fall crashing to the ground, lest we become a hopeless mess, lest we do what we would never wish....

Vulnerability.  It is a word that has haunted me whatever path I have taken: it drew me to theatre, to charismatic prayer, to friendship, to psychology, and again to prayer....

Yet still the word looms like an insurmountable tower, its gates impregnable against my weak-willed assault.  I gaze at it like a puzzle, wondering how to unlock it.  Yet in truth I am made ungainly by my own weighty mail with all its interwoven rings of steel, my own walls of protection stacked stone upon stone over the years, and cannot grasp with my armored claws something so soft and simple and small.

Of course we need our gates and walls to keep out the evils of the world.  The problem is mainly that we forget to let down the drawbridge when the King comes knocking, especially because He comes without fine array, riding on a donkey.

"So let us spread before His feet not garments or soulless olive branches, which delight the eye for a few hours and then wither, but ourselves, clothed in His grace, or rather, clothed completely in Him.  We who have been baptized into Christ must ourselves be the garments that we spread before Him."

When we admit our own vulnerability—that we are naked before Him—then we know that we must be clothed in His grace and in His very self.  That humility allows us to throw ourselves before Him to tread upon as He enters the heavenly Jerusalem in glory where one day—after our own journey to Calvary—He will raise us up to reign with Him and to enjoy our own resurrection.

Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!  Hosanna in the highest!

XIII. Jesus is Taken Down from the Cross

V. We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee.
R. Because by Thy holy Cross, Thou hast redeemed the world.


What a terrifying experience it must have been to have stood beneath the cross on Calvary as the Savior of the world died, the earth quaked, and the veil of the temple was torn in two.  Then to receive His body....

Our Lady must have thought of the first time she held her Son in her arms when she held His broken body.  Then she must have marveled at how God could rest in the fragile flesh of an infant.  Now she grieved at the tortured body of that Son who had borne incomprehensible sufferings by taking on the sins of the whole world.

Her own heart had been pierced by the sword of sorrow foretold by Simeon in the temple.  Thus her suffering too became a well of love united with that of her Son, earning her the title Co-Redemptrix.

Although her heart must have broken as she pressed the body of her Son to her heart, still in the depths of her heart she uttered still that simple word of love: "Fiat."  Whatever she willed, she knew that God's will must be done.  She knew that no matter how cruel it seemed, no matter how dark the path that she must tread forward, that the Father's Providence would bring good out of evil.

Now by her prayers she seeks to obtain for us that same grace.

O Mother of sorrow, for the love of this Son, accept me for thy servant, and pray to Him for me. And Thou, my Redeemer, since Thou hast died for me, permit me to love Thee; for I wish but Thee, and nothing more. I love Thee, my Jesus, and I repent of ever having offended Thee. Never permit me to offend Thee again. Grant that I may love Thee always; and then do with me what Thou wilt. (From the Stations of the Cross according to Saint Alphonsus Liguori.)

The Spirit is Willing but the Body's a Mess

“When I feel better, then I will be able to...”

Have you ever caught yourself saying something like that? Or perhaps you have repeated such phrases countless times without being aware of how foolish it sounds from an eternal perspective.

After all, if you gave a cursory glance across the list of canonized saints you might well believe that all it requires to become a saint is to get tuberculosis and die at a young age. You can bet your buttons none of them were going around planning for all the things they would do once they got better.

Although you may take my comments on the saints and tuberculosis merely as a joke (and I hope they at least make you smile), they contain an important truth as well: the reality of suffering in a life of sanctity. I think I can safely say that all of the saints suffered—some of them more than others certainly. Suffering, after all, is a part of the human condition. It is also a part of becoming holy.

So, as we put one foot in front of the other on the slow path to sanctity that we all follow, we pilgrims toward the Heavenly Jerusalem must learn to transform our perspective. Instead of seeing our pains and suffering as an obstacle to all the good that we might do, we must see them as the forging of our holiness. Pain gives us the opportunity to develop virtues such as patience. It is in suffering that we are tested like silver and have all our impurities burned away.

Yet this clear light of truth that shines upon the reality of suffering breaks apart into shadows and deception when it comes to the mind. It is one thing to endure pain of the body from some physical illness or even emotional pain such as the hurt of being misunderstood or rejected by others or any such suffering where your intellect functions as it was meant to do. However, when the body is such a mess that the mind is seriously affected—call it insanity, mental illness, or what you will—and it is no longer possible to reason acceptance of suffering against the sea of dark and self-condemnatory thoughts, what is one to do? How can any good fruit come of enduring an inability to love oneself or others?

I must maintain that in that dark place God remains. That is all I know.

What mysteries He works within those shadows and labyrinths of deception I cannot fathom, but I must believe that He does. For if He is all good and makes all things work together for good, then His power must be enough to transform these seeming evils into bright gems that one day will reflect the light.

Still, how are we poor mortals struggling along to handle those moments when the body is such a mess that the mind and will no longer strive for good?

It seems callous to say offer it up or that we must abandon ourselves to it as part of God's Providence. Yet what else is there to say? If suffering truly matters and if we are to sacrifice our lives according to the nature of our baptismal priesthood, then why should we shy away when it becomes difficult or even when it seems impossible?

Christ on the road to Calvary fell many times in His weakness. His body must have been the worst mess ever. We can only imagine how that must have affected His mind and will. Yet He got up and went on.

So we also can do even when the body is a mess and the brain feels like a refuse pit. If rising in the morning seems an insurmountable obstacle and it takes ninety-nine attempts before achieving success, or if it requires three hours to draw up the energy necessary to look someone in the face, there is merit there. If prayer becomes impossible and all external acts of charity and virtue cease to exist, God is still working.

Those little things that so many of us take for granted may be someone else's battleground. It is there in that epic tussle with the minutiae of daily life that some of us will achieve that ultimate union with God. Although the dragons may seem to gain the victory with their lies and oppression, their dominion will not last forever: all that is not of God will cease to exist. Then His light will shine fully upon His faithful warriors, revealing all their wounds and scars that tell of countless battles fought for love of Him—battles that may have been lost in order to win the war.