This Is the Day

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coronavirus, Holy Week, Palm Sunday, rejoice, ritual, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, This is the day the Lord has made.

“This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us be glad and rejoice in it.”

This line is for me like the “ticker tape” message on the New York Times Building in Times Square, NYC, this morning. It keeps running through my consciousness, calling me to attention. What’s the message?

It is Sunday. It is a Sunday of high ritual; we call it Palm Sunday. (Lots of people are sitting at home weaving crosses of palm fronds right now.) This Palm Sunday will be a challenge for religious people everywhere who are devoted to the rituals that we Christians call “Holy Week” because we have been told to stay home from Church to protect ourselves and one another from the pandemic (COVID-19) that is now ravaging the entire world.

Obedience is more difficult when you cannot see with your eyes the reason for the directive, i.e. in this case: “STAY HOME.” Spring is here. We have a proliferation of daffodils in our yard. The weeping willow trees have that light yellow-green haze that precedes the leafing out of other trees. Today promises to be warm enough for a light coat, and by next Sunday what we used to call “Easter finery.” We can’t see the reason for letting go of everything that we are told is necessary to our well-being, but we know now that it is a matter of life or death.

Reflection on this situation that we cannot see or touch but only know by its effects is perhaps a way to move from outside to inside, from action to intention, and then from head to heart. Take the case of the practicing Catholic who waits for this week to prepare each year for the rituals that end in the glorious feast of Easter. The moments of distress and horror as s/he walks with Jesus through trial, suffering (physical and mental) and ultimately death will be swallowed up in the glory of resurrection. How is all that possible this year?

Can we be satisfied — if we are lucky enough to have live-streamed services — to watch it all on television? If that is not available, can we read the relevant chapters in the Scriptures and put ourselves energetically into the scenes of the week? Can we move through the days in a silence of the heart, a spiritual communion, connecting ourselves to all of our brothers and sisters who are suffering across the world.

This is the day — as is every day — that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice that we are called to deeper understanding of the God who calls us. And may we rejoice in that knowledge that we belong to this God and to one another in a deeper way than ever before — a deeper way of the heart.

Joining Forces

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bonding together, Holy Week, Jesus, light of the world, Palm Sunday, Passion, spiritual mystery, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Today is Passion/Palm Sunday, when across the world people turn inward to consider the events of this cataclysmic week in the life of Jesus. Before beginning to consider what to write this morning, I “surfed” a bit on the internet where everything called me to consciousness of the enormity of the weeklong event that is just beginning.

I have always had difficulty considering the swiftness of change in the events from the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem to the crucifixion. Lately, however, with all the violence in the world that seems to erupt sometimes from nowhere, I have come to recognize the vagaries of human behavior and to accept that kind of bubbling up of change in emotional reaction in crowds. This year I have a sense of something shifting in myself and elsewhere in a different direction. The number of groups and organizations that are arising across the world for good purpose is increasing and the messages of such entities seem to be more and more similar, thus creating recognition, if not yet bonding together, for the benefit of the world both spiritually and materially (which at a certain level cannot remain separate).

For Christians it is the following of Jesus that moves us toward our neighbor in spreading light in the world. There is no better time to consider this truth and our part in it than this week. One of my stops this morning on the worldwide web was the site of The Episcopal Society of St. John the Evangelist where a quote from one of their recently deceased monks, Br. Eldridge Pendleton, captured my sense of what is afoot. He said the following:

Make no mistake about it. The events of Holy Week and Easter are not merely annual reenactments of the tragic events of the life of an important historical personage. This is spiritual mystery on its deepest and most cosmic scale.

May we all open ourselves to the power of this week and move toward oneness for redemption of the world.

Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion

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betrayal, denial, Holy Week, Jerusalem, Jesus, Judas, Palm Sunday, Peter, renewal, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

There is so much to read today in the lectionary texts, so many scenarios and complicating emotions! It’s only Sunday and we have the whole Holy Week to deal with, yet the entire drama is placed before us today, perhaps so that we are able to hold it all as the week goes on  – even while knowing already both the tragic and the glorious pieces of the outcome.

I always try to be in the moment as we travel through the days of Holy Week but no matter how deeply we place ourselves in the scenes as they are recounted – the joyful entry of Jesus into Jerusalem to the acclaim of the crowd, the poignant last supper with his closest disciples and then the emotional flip to the denial of Jesus by Peter and betrayal by Judas, the trial, crucifixion and burial – it is impossible for us to feel the total impact of it all. We know the end of the story even as it begins.

Perhaps the best we can do is reflect on experiences in our lives that are analogous to, although maybe not as stark as, what we are facing this week. Consider the celebrative meals – anniversaries or holidays, perhaps – that you have shared with loved ones, especially if someone is moving away or in danger of death. Reflect on a low moment when you could have spoken up with a truth that would not be popular yet you remained silent or went along with the crowd. Remember recent stories of gun violence when innocent people were killed for no reason. If you are able, take the feelings from these scenarios (or others) and the seek out Jesus for a quiet moment of conversation about what he is experiencing on each of these days.

There is great opportunity for deepening spiritually during this week. May we all come to Easter renewed!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Streaming Thoughts

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Alleluia, Christian, daffodils, displacement, faith, Happy Easter, Holy Week, Palm Sunday, refugees, resurrection, Risen Christ, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, violence

So here I am, back as promised, to wish you a Happy Easter. It’s a little late in the day but I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to say that throughout the past week I was creating blog posts in my mind that, unfortunately, only made it a couple of times to print. Now we are in a different season altogether. It’s a sunny 65 degrees (F) here in upstate New York and the daffodils have come bursting to flower – very different from the cloudy, cold touring weather of two days ago. Holy Week is over, for which most people are grateful. It’s hard to think of all that violence and pain, after all. Much nicer to sing “Alleluia!” and rejoice in the Risen Christ.

On Thursday I was struck by two competing images that had a significant effect on my reflection about what was going on in the life of Jesus and friends as it related to the here and now. I was at a park known for its vast expanse of spring flowers – acres and acres of color in different configurations with hundreds – maybe thousands – of people exclaiming about the beauty and creativity of what was before them. Everyone was so uplifted; I thought of the crowds on Palm Sunday as Jesus entered Jerusalem to their shouts of praise. As I was leaving, the throng pouring through the gates made me think of a stream of refugees as I could hear many languages and see a diversity of  faces, all beautiful faces, moving toward an exit – toward home (?).

It would be a stretch to try to draw a direct line from one of those images to the other. I guess my thoughts were all background to the reality that life – although a series of moments – is also a wholeness where wild rejoicing and violence sometimes intertwine and where situations can change abruptly, leaving us to look for solutions which are sometimes very hard to find – or even impossible.

Even as we celebrate the Resurrection of Christ, we know that there are hordes of people suffering from violence, being forced from their homelands and refused, in some cases, a safe place of refuge. How are we to reconcile this reality with the core of Christian faith? How can we rise when our brothers and sisters are still held down?

I remember a poem from long ago that began: Easter people everywhere, shining Jesus love…” That seems the only answer to my question right now. I need to be listening for what I can do to alleviate the pain of displacement that is so vast in our world. And while I’m listening, I need to be radiating love to all those who need to know that resurrection is possible – not in a simplistic way (There are no simplistic soluntions in this complex world) but in the only way we can proceed: in hope and love and trust and willingness. And in solidarity – never separating ourselves from those who need us and count on us to transmit our reasons for hope to them.

I wonder what I would have written if I had started on Thursday and been successful at posting then – and on Friday and yesterday. Would today’s words have wiped away the recognitions that appear above? Is it ever that way for us? Can we ever let go of the reality of yesterday in order to let in today? But how do we hold both? Ah, therein lies the rub…and it will take more than today to settle on a response. Maybe that is a task for the Fifty Days of Easter…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Palm Sunday

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bad news, betrayal, crucifixion, death, faithfulness, Good News, Holy Week, Isaiah, Jerusalem, Luke, Palm Sunday, Philippians, praise, psalm 22, surrender, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, torture, trust

We have often heard the adage: “Good news, bad news – who knows!” The caution in this statement is about holding out until the end, when the final conclusion allows an informed assessment of whether the situation under consideration is, in fact, good or bad news.

Palm Sunday is the epitome of a good news/bad news story. We begin with Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem to jubilant chants of “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” (LK 19: 28-40) and end with the crucifixion, death and burial of Jesus as Luke tells the story (LK 22:14-23:56). Admittedly there is some telescoping of the time frame as we know the incidents happened over several days rather than all at once, but it is nevertheless a stunning example of the vicissitudes of crowd mentality.

Reflecting on this Sunday’s readings one realizes that the need for the faithful to wait for “the rest of the story” is implicit at each step. Isaiah’s words (IS 50: 4-7) paint a fearful picture of what the servant suffers in trying to speak God’s word to the weary: beatings, plucking of his beard, buffets and spitting. The message to us, however, is in the last verse where the prophet witnesses to God’s faithfulness in all the violence he has endured. The Lord God is my help, he says, therefore I am not disgraced. I have set my face like flint, knowing I shall not be put to shame.

The refrain of the responsorial psalm (PS 22): My God, my God, why have you abandoned me could be interpreted as despair of the crucified Jesus. Not so! Jesus, who likely knew all 150 psalms by heart, knew the ending. Like Isaiah, he trusted that whatever happened, God was faithful and worthy of praise: I will proclaim your name to my brethren, the psalmist sings; in the midst of the assembly I will praise him. (vs.23)

Even as we focus on reciprocal fidelity as the linchpin of relationship between God and Jesus, we know that the suffering endured in the Paschal Mystery was monumental. From betrayal of friends to physical torture and death, Luke’s gospel reminds us that Jesus trusted God and poured himself out in love for our sake. It would behoove us to spend time with this text seeing anew each compassionate encounter on his path from the Last Supper to the cross.

Only the Letter to the Philippians speaks from a post-resurrection perspective today (PHIL 2:6-11). It is the willingness of Jesus to surrender everything that leads to his exaltation as Lord. But let us not be too hasty to reach the finish line. Let us rather take every step of this Holy Week with Jesus, trusting as he did that the Lord God is our help.

The Audacity of Mercy

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bravery, broken heart, courage, daring, Holy Week, Jesus, Joan Chittister, justice, Lenten journey, love, mercy, openness, Palm Sunday, Pilate, pluck, The Audacity of Mercy, The Monastic Way, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, truth, understanding

This morning as I was pondering the lectionary readings for the day I came across an old (2005) edition of Joan Chittister’s daily reflection pamphlet, The Monastic Way, that I had saved. Long before Francis had been elected Pope and proclaimed this a year of mercy, Sister Joan had spent a month writing about “The Audacity of Mercy.” Of course she was not talking about audacity in its negative “Well! The audacity of that woman to tell me what to do!” but rather of audacity in a positive context, meaning daring, bravery, courage, pluck…Her reflections are brief but always to the point and the one that caught my attention most of all this morning was the following:

The major holy-making moment in our own lives may be when we receive the mercy we know we do not deserve. Then, we may never again substitute disdain for understanding, rejection for openness, legalism for justice. “I think perhaps it is a better world,” Helen Waddell writes, “if one has a broken heart. Then one is quick to recognize it elsewhere.

As we come ever closer to the events of Holy Week, we would do well to remember this lesson and look for ourselves in the crowds that Jesus will encounter: those shouting praises on Palm Sunday, those jeering as he stands before Pilate or carries his cross…or even those of his disciples that go missing or deny him when it gets dangerous. Shall we judge them, or would we do better to carry a mirror with us into every situation to see where we stand? What is our “mercy quotient?” May you, may I, always be found standing on the side of the mercy that is born of truth and love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Holding On

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disciples, Easter, faith, Jesus, Palm Sunday, Passion, resurrection, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

I’m feeling conflicted this morning. I know that we are moving swiftly toward the events of the most solemn week of the year for Christians – from Palm Sunday to the crucifixion and death of Jesus. It’s difficult for us to understand in a visceral way the pain impact of those events because we already know the end of the story, that is the Resurrection of Jesus that we celebrate on Easter Sunday. It’s a bit like looking out on a winter landscape with a temperature of 16F degrees when the calendar and all our sensibilities say it should be spring. (Sorry. I know I sound like a broken record but it’s been an unusually difficult winter.) We know the outcome – or at least have hope because of what history and past seasons have told us. Seeds breaking open lead to future flowering, just as the broken body of Jesus was raised from the dead into a transformed existence to which we are all called as well. The latter is more difficult to grasp because we have not seen the miracle with our own eyes as we have in nature each year.  Perhaps, however, for those of us living in this unforgiving winter, this year gives us an advantage; our expectations of the “end of the story” have been disappointed again and again as the cold continues to seep into our bones. How long will we wait? What is the level of our trust that spring will eventually come? Silly questions, I know – but the temptation to despair is real.

In whatever situation has caused that kind of feeling in our lives- if not the weather – let us sit in the uncertainty of not knowing the outcome. Maybe then we will understand what the disciples of Jesus were feeling as the mood of the crowds changed and the fate of Jesus became more uncertain day by day. Let us try to live the remaining days before Easter in the space of those who lived these events for the first time in history, conscious that, for them, it was faith that had to take them to resurrection and there was no precedent for that.