Bracing for Impact

Holy Thursday–Mass of the Lord’s Supper
    When I served as the Administrator of St. Joseph parish in Adrian, before Bishop Boyea assigned me as pastor, I still kept the same dentist in Williamston I had had growing up.  On 24 November 2014, I had morning Mass, and then started the drive up M-52 to get to Williamston for my appointment.  It had snowed recently, and there was maybe an inch on the ground, the roads were clear, except in the middle of the two-lane road and on the shoulders.  The sun was out and it was mostly clear skies.

My car after the accident

    Just after I left the village of Stockbridge, heading north on a straight stretch of road at around 55 mph, there was a Chevy Tahoe traveling south.  All of the sudden, the Tahoe started to slide into my lane, and I knew what would happen next.  I closed my eyes out of reflex as the moment of impact came, and tensed up, bracing for impact (which is, ironically, one of the worst things you can do if you know you’re going to be hit).  When I opened my eyes I was facing west, between 10 and 20 feet into a field on the east side of M-52.  All my airbags had deployed, and I could not feel any major injuries.  While I was taken to the hospital for evaluation, I had no major injuries, though my car was totaled.
    I knew something bad was going to happen, and I braced myself.  Tonight, as we begin this Sacred Triduum, these three holiest of days, I invite us this year to look to our Lord to see what He did as something not just bad, but awful, prepared to happen.
    In the Gospel tonight we simply hear about the washing of feet.  But, between Palm Sunday and Good Friday’s Passion Narratives, we know what else happened.  The Lord instituted the priesthood (which we celebrated liturgically this morning at the Chrism Mass) and the Eucharist.  He then went to the Garden of Gethsemane, not too long of a walk from the Upper Room, and there prayed so intensely that blood dripped from his body.  As the night progressed, Judas, one of His hand-picked Apostles, His closest friends, betrayed Him, and the Jewish soldiers took Jesus to the house of the High Priest for questioning.
    What a dramatic shift!  It’s like the weather in Michigan: going from 70 degrees one day to 30 degrees that night.  Christ had the joy of being with His closest friends and telling them that they would share in His power to change bread and wine into His Sacred Body and His Precious Blood.  But none of them quite understand.  And then, as He goes off to pray, the three closest of the closest–Peter, James, and John–all fall asleep, perhaps emotionally overwhelmed themselves in confusion of having their feet washed and eating what looked like bread, but that Christ had assured them was His Body.  
    The mental anguish was so much that Christ lost blood while praying to His Father, hoping that there could be another way to save humanity, but entrusting Himself in obedience to the will of the Father.  And then that moment, a moment He saw coming, when Judas came to betray Him with a kiss, and He was arrested and taken away, while His closest friends mostly scattered and fled.
    Throughout it all, Christ leans into His relationship with the Father.  St. John the Apostle and Evangelist records the beautiful, poetic, and cryptic monologue that we call the Last Supper Discourse, where Jesus talks about His connection to the Father.  We struggle when we try to explain the love we have for a spouse or a best friend.  Even more so do words fail to properly communicate the love between the Eternal Father and Co-Eternal Son.  

The church built over the place in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prayed

    And in the agony in the garden, the first sorrowful mystery of the Rosary, Christ leans in on His relationship with the Father to ask that the chalice of suffering might pass, but that God’s will would be accomplished, and that Christ would be obedient to it, no matter the cost.  How fully the words of Psalm 116 were fulfilled on Good Friday as Christ took up the chalice of salvation and called on the name of the Lord.
    So, when we struggle with difficulties, as members of the Mystical Body of Christ, we should lean in to our relationship with the Father.  We are His beloved children, adopted in Christ.  When any difficulty comes our way, do we go to God immediately?  Do we ask for His help?  And, like Christ, do we humbly submit to the will of the Father, even when the chalice of suffering cannot pass by?  
    As we enter these three most holy days, may we cling to our love of the Father and His love for us, the love that saved us from sin and death, and opened heaven to all believers.