Sixth Sunday of Lent

Bishop Emeritus Roger Foys

Guest

Holy Week. The holiest week of the year for all Christians. A week filled with emotion. We move from joy to wonder, to betrayal, to denial, to grief and back to joy.  We relive that week during which Jesus would suffer and die. We walk with him, as it were, the path to his passion and death. But we begin with joy.

On Palm Sunday, Jesus was welcomed with great fanfare into Jerusalem. Throngs of people lined the streets and shouted his name. Hosanna, they called to the Son of David! What exhilaration must’ve filled the air! The Lord had arrived! The Savior was to save his people! But, unfortunately, that joy would not last. By the end of the week, it would turn to grief and sorrow.

On Holy Thursday, Jesus dined with his apostles to celebrate the Passover meal. During this meal, he would wash the feet of his apostles, a ritual ordinarily conducted by a servant. Jesus, the Son of God, stooped down to wash the feet of his apostles — and when he was finished, he would tell them that what he had just done, they were to do for each other.

This was a sign of His love, His humility. He wanted his disciples to do likewise. This is the kind of community he desired his followers to live — one of service, one of love. The apostles must have wondered what all this meant.

Further on Holy Thursday, Jesus would bless and break the bread, would bless the wine and proclaim that this was his body and his blood and that his apostles were to do this in memory of him. Notice, he didn’t say this was a symbol or a sign of his Body and Blood. He said this IS my body, this Is my blood. And so, he gave us the Eucharist to sustain us on our journey, to strengthen us amid the vicissitudes of life. Thus, was given to us the gift of the Eucharist and of the Priesthood. It was a marvelous wonder!

But then came the betrayal. Judas, one of the disciples of Jesus, sold him to those who wanted to kill him. And he betrayed Jesus with a kiss. With a kiss, a sign of love, a sign of friendship.

And once Jesus was taken away, his most trusted disciple, Peter, would deny him — not once, not twice, but three times. He proclaimed that he didn’t know Jesus and was certainly not one of his followers.

The next day, Good Friday, we recall the passion and death of Jesus on the cross. What grief must his followers have experienced. What sorrow must have filled his mother, Mary, as she beheld her beloved son beaten and bruised as he carried his cross to Golgotha, the place of his death. What emptiness filled the earth on that dreadful day.

On Holy Saturday, the disciples of Jesus must have experienced that loss. They had thrown their lot in with Jesus. They had given up everything to follow him. And now, it had all come crashing down. Would they ever experience joy again?

What can we learn from this Holy Week as we walk with Jesus?

We have all at some point in our lives experienced the joy that the apostles must have felt on that Palm Sunday when Jesus was welcomed to Jerusalem — that exhilarating feeling that we would like to bask in for the rest of our lives. But we know that the joys of this world are fleeting, that our true joy — the joy that will last — can only be found in the Lord and in our obedience to His word. When life gets difficult, it is good to remember the joys we’ve experienced and to thank God for them. We also know that life is made up of joys and sorrows, of good times and bad, of success and failure. So, we do not lose hope, we do not give up or give in.

There are also times in our life that we experience wonder just as the apostles did when Jesus washed their feet and when he gave us the Eucharist and the Priesthood. They might not have understood at that moment all that these gifts of Jesus implied, but they accepted them, knowing that they were acts of love, acts of friendship. When we experience this kind of wonder in life, we give thanks to God for providing it for us. We have experiences that we don’t always understand, but it is enough to understand that God provides these moments for us because He loves us.

Betrayal, unfortunately, is sometimes a part of our lives. Perhaps we’ve been betrayed by a spouse, a friend, a co-worker, a neighbor. A relationship that we imagined would last forever suddenly ends. We are left stunned, we don’t understand. How could this happen? What or who caused it? Is it irrevocable? Was it me? Did I do something wrong? It seems to be a pain too difficult to bear. How will we ever survive? When these moments happen, we remember Jesus and His betrayal by Judas, by one he trusted, one he chose, one he loved. We will survive, we will conquer the grief, the hurt, even the anger. We pray to the Lord Jesus, who experienced the betrayal of one he loved, and ask Him to ease the pain, to ease the hurt, to heal the emptiness we feel at that moment.

And finally, grief. Sometimes people discount grief, as though grief is something to be embarrassed about, as though grief is a sign of weakness. Grief, believe it or not, is a byproduct of love. If we never loved, we’d never grieve. But if we never love, we never live. When someone we love dies, no matter how strong our faith is, we feel a loss, there is a void, an emptiness in our lives. The passing of a loved one leaves a hole in our hearts. You can imagine how the apostles grieved when the one in whom they had placed all their trust, all their hope, for whom they had given up everything and everyone, died. Their hopes and dreams hung on that cross with Jesus, and they saw those hopes and dreams dashed. How would they go on, how would they survive? But they did. We are blessed to know that the death of Jesus on the cross was not the end. We know the rest of the story. We know that the grief the apostles were experiencing would turn to joy when the Lord Jesus would be raised from the dead. This was not the end — it was the beginning. So too with us. When we experience grief from some significant loss, our grief can be turned into joy when we remember that Jesus died for us but that he also rose. He is with us always. This is our hope. This is our faith. This is our joy.

And so, we end as we began — with joy. The joy of Palm Sunday, the wonder and betrayal of Holy Thursday, the grief of Good Friday, the emptiness of Holy Saturday will give way to a new joy with the resurrection of Jesus Who conquers sin and the grave.

A blessed Holy Week and a joyous Easter to all!

Most Rev. Roger J. Foys, D.D. is Bishop Emeritus of the Diocese of Covington, Ky.