An Easter Reflection

Holy Week for Christians is a time of special intensity. It is a week during which we do things that we don’t usually do and hear things we usually don’t hear. Holy Week has been held in great reverence since the very early years of the Church and no other Christian observance has interested the world so much. The rituals of the Church are complex and laden with meaning and proclaim to the world the liberating Good News that Christ has died, Christ is risen and Christ will come again.

In the three days of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday, the Church gives us a dramatic, intense and richly symbolic expression of the very heart of Christian belief. By participating in the liturgy of these three days, we can deepen our understanding of what it means for us to be a Christian.

There are Christian people who find it difficult to come to Church any more. They have had experiences with the Church that have been hurtful to them and so find that the Church has little or nothing to offer them. Such people are closer to Jesus than they might have imagined. When Jesus entered Jerusalem, He was entering the holiest city of the Jewish religion, the city of the Great Temple the centre of which was the Holy of Holies, a place so revered that only the High Priest of the year was allowed to enter it. Yet, it was in Jerusalem that Jesus was betrayed, falsely accused, humiliated and handed over to an occupying force by the senior religious leaders, so He could be tortured and executed.

Like everything that happened in Jesus’ life there is something to be learned from this experience. Jesus’ belief in Himself and the purpose of His life was being tested to the extreme. Even though things did not seem to be working out the way He might have expected, the events that followed were totally momentous: Jesus died, Jesus rose and Jesus, eventually, will come again.

For people who have suffered religious hurt, Jesus’ experience is saying yes, there is real hurt, yes, it can be confusing but it is possible to rise above it all and to come again to the beliefs you once had and that are still dormant within you. Maybe Holy Week is a time to be reunited with Jesus as an understanding life companion.

On the night before He died, Jesus did something rather extraordinary He washed the feet of His apostles, in spite of their protests. He had a special purpose in doing this: “Do you understand what I have done? You call Me your teacher and Lord, and you should, because that is what I am. And if your Lord and teacher has washed your feet, you should do the same for each other. I have set the example, and you should do for each other exactly what I have done for you.”

John 13: 12-15.

Christians are to be strong in their love for one another and for all people. Holy Week is definitely a week with a difference and spiritually rewarding for Christians who, willingly, are part of its unfolding.