On Approaching Holy Week and the Cross

A week before Palm Sunday, and Holy Week, we are again approaching our encounter with the Cross. We are again approaching our close encounter with the Cross of Our Lord Jesus, Him being nailed to it. As the Epistle to the Hebrews (which we heard on Ash Wednesday) continues to teach us in Lent: we are ever to look to Jesus as the pioneer and perfector of our faith; to look upon Him as He endures the Cross.

It is in this way that the purpose of Lent becomes clear: we are to understand ourselves as always in need of a Savior. Thus the purpose of Lent is to reject any way of thinking that thinks we do not need a Savior; that is, to reject any way of thinking that we are righteous. And in rejecting the temptation to think oneself as righteous (like the Pharisee), we more and more accept and joyfully celebrate that we are sinners (that is, we are people who know that we need a Savior, and know that Saviour to be Jesus Christ, and only Him). Jonah barely realized he needed a savior, and he suffered as a result; the Samaritan woman realized this decently well, and was joyous. Yet it was the Tax Collector who realized it fully, for he not only understood himself as needing a Savior who is Jesus Christ, the Tax Collector asked for God’s mercy. Thus Christ proclaimed him justified and exalted.

And so the invitation is to fall on our knees in honest and sober recognition that we are sinners, because we are completely in need of Jesus as our Savior, and in need of His mercy; and in so doing accept Our Lord’s invitation to deeper relationship with Him. This is how we run the race, and we feel the urgency of the race in the fervency of our prayer, the fervency of our asking Jesus Christ for His mercy upon us. The Gospel of Christ is that He yearns to heal us, yearns to transform us, yearns to feed us, yearns to quench our thirst. He yearns, in other words, to love us, that we feel loved by Him. It is a race of falling in love.

It is in this way that Christians become slaves of God, in the terms of Saint Paul. Because we are able to know Jesus Christ, and know Him to be our loving, merciful Savior, and because we know that He hears our prayers, that He hears our requests, that He knows our hearts, we therefore are assured that we can ask Christ for mercy anytime, and in so doing, He loves us and makes His presence known to us in that very moment: because mercy received is mercy known, and mercy known reveals mercy’s Source, Who is Christ. When Christians ask Christ for mercy, we are not speaking to empty air: Christ is present to those who ask Him for what He yearns to give in abundance. All this is our freedom, the great and awesome freedom in Christ, the free gift found by those who seek Him; opened to those who knock; received by those who ask. This is what we are given for being Christ’s servants, for being Christ’s disciples, for being members of His Body. We are given Him!

In his second epistle to the Church in Corinth, chapter 4, Saint Paul writes that Christians are to be “always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.” This too is how we are Christ’s slaves who participate in Christ’s freedom. And as we approach Holy Week in seven days’ time, it is time for us to gird our loins, for we are going to be grappling once more with the dying and death of our Lord Jesus Christ. Christ very much wants us to have His death close to our heart, which is what Paul means when he speaks of carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus. Not only His death, but the very manner of His death, is entirely for us. As Saint John records Jesus saying, “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, for this purpose I have come to this hour.” Christ willingly and completely of His obedience to the Father chose to be the grain of wheat that falls to the earth. For in His falling to the earth, the fruit of His Body which is the Church may flower, ripen, and become sweet.

As we approach Holy Week, we approach the fact that to see Jesus begins by seeing Him on the Cross. This is what He is teaching the Church in today’s Gospel passage. Let us, my dear brothers and sisters, prepare to firmly fix our hearts on our Savior nailed to the Cross, for this is where true joys are to be found; this is where freedom is found; Christ shows us what it is to be God in the way he dies as a human being. May our entering into Holy Week rest in this very truth: that Christ shows us what it is to be God in the way he dies as a human being. Amen.