As we enter into Holy Week, the days in which we remember the passion, crucifixion and death of our blessed Lord, one might be tempted to say that this is a desert, a barren land, something that we would rather not have to endure, something that we would rather forget and leave behind. It is often said that we are “Easter” people. True enough, but really, we are also “Holy Week” people and always have been.
It is in the awesome miracle of the Son of God, suffering and dying as the perfect sacrifice for our sins, that we have hope. To say that we want to look past the suffering that comes with entering “into the desert of Lent”, and also the suffering of Holy Week, is to miss the very thing that makes it possible for us to get to heaven. Jesus came to this earth to accomplish the will of the Father, to give us a way to heaven. This path is His sacrifice of the cross. We do indeed have hope in eternal life, but it is only by uniting ourselves to Jesus’ sacrifice that we get there. So to say that we would rather forget the suffering, and go straight to Easter, is to miss the very thing that makes it possible for us to hope in heaven. We need to embrace the suffering of Holy Week in order to experience the joy of Easter.
When we experience our own seasons of Lent in which we must suffer and pick up our crosses, we have hope and trust in Christ’s own passion and we take those crosses and unite them to His to follow Him up the hill of Calvary. In our lives, as we work to get to heaven, even though it may sometimes be very difficult, we take up our crosses out of love for our crucified Lord. When we accept the crosses of our lives and unite them to Jesus’ cross out of love we do what the saints did, we come to realize that they are actually gifts from God that help us on our way to holiness and to heaven.
Fr. Jacquemin
