Easter Sunday

Journey Together

What draws you to participation in the rituals of Holy Week? I have asked many parishioners and friends that question this week. Some like the visual symbols—the palms, the music, the praying in silence (keeping watch with Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane), the veneration of the cross, the washing of feet, the Easter fire and candles, the Stations of the Cross, the baptisms of adults. Others began to reflect on the meaning of many of these visual symbols. You reflected back to me some of the ways that you are drawn to participate in the meaning-filled liturgies of Holy Week.

When we hear “Do this in remembrance of me” on Holy Thursday, what is the “this” that we are asked to do? How do we “wash feet” in our ordinary days?

Just before Jesus’ last words, “it is finished,” he said, “I thirst.” When Jesus says “I thirst” as he is hanging on the cross, was his thirst for a drink or was it for all of us and for our love? For what do you thirst this Good Friday?

And as we anticipate the joy of Christ Risen, what new life has come to us through our observance of Lent? How has darkness become light? What “bindings” have been loosed? What have we left behind in the empty tomb?

As we truly live the Paschal Mystery these next few days, I know without a doubt that what stays with us, what is deeply seared in our souls is the experience of journeying together. Our private settings have become public. It is the public witness that Jesus gave us of LOVE lived, laying down our lives, even unto death! Christ is Risen, alleluia!