Happy Friday, Everybody,
Here we go into our last Little Triduum before the big one. To commence Holy Week this Sunday is Palm Sunday, and our Gospel reading is Jesus’ Last Supper and Passion from Matthew 26:14 – 27:66, which you can read here:
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/032926.cfm
It gives us a lot to consider in the Light of the Grave.
I have been reading a book by Nicholas Diat called A Time to Die wherein the author writes of his visits to monasteries to learn how the monks face death. One might think that the detachment from the world and disciplined devotion to God which are essential to monastic life would guarantee an easy crossing from the here to the hereafter. But it is not always so. It would seem, from reading this book, that not only does no one here get out alive, but that few, if any, here get out with ease.
Our Lord’s words to the disciples that they would have their faith shaken on the night of his arrest came true, despite all the time they’d spent with him witnessing his miracles, and despite Peter’s bold reply that maybe the others’ faith would be shaken, but his would not (we know how that worked out!).
Soon after this, Jesus, finding Peter asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane, tells him “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
With our privileged perspective of Jesus’ victory over death, and that we were created to live with him forever, how weak ought our flesh to be? Well, it remains… fleshly weak. Flesh is flesh, before, during and even after the death that ended all death. But the spirit? The spirit that wills can be strong, and God has given us a Divine Inverter to increase the strength of that spiritual will.
What is that inverter? It is Jesus himself. Paradoxically, when we take the things that shake our flesh and run them through Jesus our spirits are strengthened.
We might lament this inverse relationship as we cling to our physical existences, but God knows best. He knows that it is our spirit that will be carried over the threshold and that our bodies, in their present state MUST be left behind. You know this, and I know this too; it is this apparently terrible truth that shakes our flesh.
But appearances can be deceiving. Hosanna in excelsis!