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!

Good Friday

I continue with the aforementioned character's meditation for Good Friday:

A sacrifice that goes beyond life—beyond death. Who of us can fathom such an absolute self-giving, a gift of love that holds nothing back, that suffers all for love, even the gibes and scorns heaped upon His head. They called Him a lamb because they thought He did nothing, suffering Himself to be led wherever they desired, and yet there was nothing passive in this, for it was a most active gift of self from the Lord who rules the universe.

With His death the world as we know it was rent asunder—is still rent asunder—because the veil that hides the mystery was torn away. We can no longer pass our lives outside the temple, awed at the mystery, gazing toward things beyond us as if they meant nothing to our lives, marveling at a God who reigns over us, ruling from the heavens above.

Nay, now we find ourselves face to face with Him, our Lord and Brother. We see His face, bruised and bleeding, disfigured almost beyond our recognition, a criminal. How oft we turn away! For who could bear to gaze long on that much love concealed in blood and grime? Who could recognize the King of the Universe in a man condemned to die?

And so it is, we turn away, seeking a God who better fits our mind, whom we can bind within the chains of our expectations. And so it is we find ourselves hiding from His face, ignoring the love with which He gazes gently upon us and speaks our name, calling us to Himself. And so it is we find ourselves taking charge more and more, forcing all circumstances to conform themselves to our will, and in the end trying to become God unto ourselves, not only to rule our own destinies, but also that of all the world.

Yet somehow His love will never bear that we escape Him for ever. Somehow whispers come to us, so gently it is easy to ignore them, to forget, but never to escape forever the gentle touch upon our hearts.

In the end we have to face Him. Something comes to bring us to Him and we can no longer avoid the searching judgment of our lives. At that moment we are taken into His death. It is then that we must humble ourselves and unite our pain to His or else spit upon His face and turn away, knowing that His gaze of love follows us still and if we will allow it, converts our hearts and brings us back to Him at last.