We began Holy Week by hearing how Jesus entered triumphantly into His city, Jerusalem. Shortly afterwards, we recalled in the Gospel how Jesus was then mocked, stripped, and crucified for our salvation. What a stark contrast in a short amount of time. What a short time it must have seemed for Jesus between the original Palm Sunday and Good Friday.
How fickle the crown of God’s creation can be. How easily swayed we are by excitement…and fear. With the celebration of the Passover in the background, with tens of thousands of pilgrims coming to Jerusalem, the Jews welcomed Jesus. With the pressure of the Chief Priests, the Scribes, and the Sadducees, the Jews condemned Jesus for blasphemy. The King of Glory who entered His capital with shouts of “Hosanna” was made to reign upon the Cross with shouts of “Hail the King of the Jews” in mockery.
Because we have become so used to seeing Jesus on the cross in artistic renditions of the crucifix, we can easily become numb to its reality. Death by crucifixion was a death of suffocation, the lungs filling with fluid, making it harder and harder to breathe. The only way to get a breath was to use the hands and feet to push oneself up, which only increased the pain where the nails were. It was a horrible, painful death, filled with shame and derision.
In the face of such suffering, we can all too easily think that we would never have been part of the crowd crucifying Jesus. We would not be so easily swayed. We might even say with St. Peter, “‘Even though all should have their faith shaken, mine will not be.’” But we would be wrong. All of us—from Pope Benedict XVI to me and you—have all helped to hammer in those nails into Jesus’ hands and feet. All of us stand guilty.
If we lie to another, the hammer falls. If we swear and curse and take the Lord’s name in vain, the hammer falls. If we totally ignore the poor standing on the corner; if we make decisions based on prejudice and racism; if we fail to see Christ in those around us, the hammer falls. If we think first of ourselves and never of others; if we skip Mass because we don’t make time for the Lord; if we react to our parents, children, or family members with anger rather than responding with love, the hammer falls. If we ignore the Church’s teaching on human sexuality, marriage, and contraception because we feel we’re more enlightened; if we support organizations or ideologies that allow for an innocent child in the womb or an elderly or ill person to be put to death because they are inconvenient to our way of life; if we support the objectification of men and women through pornography, the hammer falls. All of us who can make a moral choice have been in that fickle mob that first hailed Jesus on His entry into Jerusalem, and then mocked him by hailing Him on the cross. All of us have helped hammer in the nails into Jesus’ hands and feet. All of us have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God. We made Jesus cry out from that cross “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” as Jesus felt the weight of our sins.
Since we have forced Jesus to walk that dark pilgrimage to the crucifixion, let us not abandon Him this week. Though we ran away with the apostles in the garden 2,000 years ago, let us accompany Jesus this year, this week, these days as the Church celebrates our salvation in Christ: to the upper room on Holy Thursday to celebrate the Last Supper; from the upper room to the Garden of Gethsemane to keep watch in prayer; from Gethsemane to Golgotha on Good Friday; and because death and sin do not have the final word, from Golgotha to the empty tomb for the Easter Vigil or the Easter Sunday Mass. We began Holy Week today in joy. Let us also end it in the joy of those who, having repented of their sins and confessed them to the Lord, have been washed clean in the blood of the Lamb. “Come now, let us set things right, says the Lord: Though your sins be like scarlet, they may become white as snow; Though they be red like crimson, they may become white as wool.”