Grasped

Monday of Holy Week

Thus says God, the LORD, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spreads out the earth with its crops, Who gives breath to its people and spirit to those who walk on it: I, the LORD, have called you for the victory of justice, I have grasped you by the hand; I formed you, and set you as a covenant of the people, a light for the nations, To open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.  Isaiah 42:5-7

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.”  John 12:7-8

Piety

St. Theresa's Prayer

Christ has no body now but yours
no hands, no feet on earth but yours
Yours are the eyes through which He looks
with compassion on this world
yours are the feet with which He walks to do good
Yours are the hands with which He blesses all the world

Yours are the hands,
yours are the feet
yours are the eyes
You are His body

Christ has no body now but yours
no hands, no feet on earth but yours
Yours are the eyes through which He looks
with compassion on this world
Christ has no body now on earth but yours

Study

“Many of the Jews were turning away…”

Just as we get a sign of the success of Jesus’s ministry, the bottom begins to fall out.  From the outset of John’s Good News, the message of the day has always been “Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.”  Turn away from your past.  Now, after all the signs – culminating in bringing Lazarus back from the dead – the turning away from the old ways and turning toward the new message Jesus preached has really picked up momentum.  This was the momentum Jesus tried to avoid when asking people to tell no one of his signs.   

Yet some remain hard-hearted.  Judas would deny Jesus the anointing today and any success in the future.  The Pharisees would deny Jesus any congregational following that comes at their expense. 

If the turning has begun, to what are we/they turning toward?  For that answer, we need look no further than the first reading from the Hebrew Bible.  Isaiah tells us that we have been formed like Jesus to “To open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.”  Our mission mirrors that of the Nazareth manifesto Jesus announced at the outset of his public ministry.  As his time with humanity draws to a close, it is our time to pick up that mission as our own.

Action

Holy Week is when the mission and manifesto of Jesus becomes ours to own and to carry out. He has held it tight but now passes it to us.

Has this Lenten season opened your eyes to what you have not seen before?  Has this Lenten season helped you learn by what you are imprisoned?  Has this Lenten season provided the light to get you out of darkness?

Although we have to prepare for the day when we do not have Jesus with us, we always have our own lives to change and each other as the aim of our apostolic action.  What are we going to do?  Sit on the sidelines with the crowd and Judas and the Pharisees?  Or dive right into this work that is thrust into our hands like the Cyrenian?  Grasp onto it.