Invite Jesus to Holy Week

“Six days before Passover Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. They gave a dinner for him there, and Martha served, while Lazarus was one of those reclining at table with him. Mary took a liter of costly perfumed oil made from genuine aromatic nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair; the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil. Then Judas the Iscariot, one of his disciples, and the one who would betray him, said, “Why was this oil not sold for three hundred days’ wages and given to the poor?” He said this not because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief and held the money bag and used to steal the contributions. So Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Let her keep this for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

The large crowd of the Jews found out that he was there and came, not only because of him, but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. And the chief priests plotted to kill Lazarus too, because many of the Jews were turning away and believing in Jesus because of him." - John 12: 1-11

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What a perfect Gospel the Church has given us to begin this Holy Week. Martha and Mary have a dinner for Jesus before he goes on to Jerusalem where he will endure his passion. When Mary uses the perfume to anoint Jesus’ feet, Judas complains in a moment of false piety, that this oil could have been used to help the poor. Jesus quickly shuts Judas and his nonsense down.

It gives us something important to think about as we begin these holiest of days: for Mary, Jesus was the center of that dinner. Who is the center of your Holy Week?

We can all sometimes be just like Judas in so many ways; we often put ourselves, our agendas, our ideologies, and our opinions at center stage. This morning I became lost in the rabbit hole that Social Media can sometimes become and I found myself on the Facebook Page of someone who often would bash the Old Catholic Church because of its “schismatic” state. As I was reading his posts I saw more than one that took cheap shots at Vatican II, rejecting both the council and its reforms. I chuckled to myself. Rejecting Vatican I is schismatic, but rejecting Vatican II is not? To this individual that sentiment is correct, because it is their opinion around which the Church turns, and not the cross of Christ.

My time away from the Church allowed me to see more of this same thinking at its peak. When personal opinion and comfort becomes the heart of the Church, it is no longer the Church. This is the danger of making a home for ourselves on the platforms of any ideological extreme. We inevitably establish ourselves as the center of our vision of the Church. A move like this is potentially fatal, because none of us are the source of life or truth. None of us are the font of redemption and mercy. None of us has all the answers: if we did, we wouldn’t need a Church at all!

This holiest week of the year reminds us that the cross of Christ is what stands at the very center of every Christian life. Each and every single one of our sins, failings, and sufferings have all been born already. All of human dysfunction is conquered on Calvary’s hill, and life in eternity is opened up for each and every one of us. The heaviest lifting has already been done.

The weight of this thought struck me one day a couple years ago as I was leaving Confession. After a particularly heartfelt and thorough experience in the Sacrament I sat in my pew after to dutifully recite my three Hail Mary’s, and I thought to myself: that’s it? Three Hail Mary’s? I am feeling all this guilt and shame and all it takes is three Hail Mary’s to wipe the slate clean? In truth, it took the brutal crucifixion, suffering and death of an innocent man to wipe the slate clean. Now all he asks me to do is pray these three Hail Mary’s and amend my life.

The cross of Christ stands at the heart of the Christian life, and it is the axis around which it turns. We express this truth in the Liturgy: in the gestures, words, and even the very structure of the Mass, and the architecture of the building in which it is celebrated.

When we are “creative” with the Liturgy because we think it’s appropriate: Christ and his Cross are no longer at the center.

When we reject some aspect of the Church that we do not like because it does not fit our ideology: Christ and his Cross are no longer at the center.

When we hate the sinner and secretly live in the sin: Christ and his Cross are no longer at the center.

When we stop going to Mass all together because we don’t care for the music, the celebrant, or the style of Liturgy of a particular Parish: Christ and his Cross are no longer the center.

Who will be the center of our Holy Week?

If we are able to make Christ and his Cross the center of our Holy Week, it can be a pivotal first step toward assuring his place at the center of our very lives. I would leave you with a thought that I read a year or two ago. The solar system has one sun, and all the planets revolve around it. So much of life that we take for granted springs from this reality: the arrival of day and night, gravity, and all the consequences of that flow from it – all of life finds at its heart the centrality of the sun in our solar system. How would that solar system operate if it had more than one sun?

When the Son is the sun at the center of our solar system, everything else finds its proper place: our political leanings, our sinfulness, our disorders, our sufferings, our success, our families and friends…everything. When the Son is at the center of it all, spiritual gravity kicks in, and everything finds it proper orbit.

May Christ and his Cross at the center of our Holy Week be the first step in assuring his place at the center of our lives.