There is no way back…

The Lord is faithful. He comforts his spouse, the Church; he holds us with a firm hand, and leads us up to the way of death.

It is a reality: what happened once is always happening; not always again but always the one same event; not today as then, but then and today. Yesterday we entered Jerusalem with the Lord. We spread out our clothing, our egoistic shells, on his way, and we met him in the bareness of a humbled self…

There is no way back; we are here in the city which he rules, the city in which he will suffer. To enter with him means to suffer with him, to die with him, and finally at the end also to rule with him…This is our comfort; we shall see him again. First Judea and Jerusalem, judgment, death, the tomb. Then Galilee, life and sight: “When I shall have risen you will see me.”

Life hangs on to the issue of death; whoever goes with the Lord to die, goes with him to live and rule; whoever dares to go the way to Jerusalem will not miss the way to Galilee. The law that we must die in obedience to God means that death opens up to life…

It is strange; had we not finally entered Jerusalem for the last time, gone into the city of death? Had not the doors shut behind us? Now, suddenly, again we are in Bethany, the house of near friends, the place of quietness, of loving service; there is a meal, and an anointing. Is there a way back when we have laid our hand on the plough; a way back out of the city where brokers in evil have set a ring around the Lord?
— Sister Aemiliana Lohr, OSB – German Benedictine Nun, died 1972

Soon enough we’ll be in grief. Then we’ll be walking along the shore, and taking breakfast. We will be walking a road and our hearts will surge with excitement when we recognise him. Soon enough, we will be placing our hands in his wounds. We will be praying in an Upper Room, in the company of His mother, Mary, and a sound like thunder will come to rip our hearts wide open, and our minds, and unloose our tongues and stir our courage.

Soon enough, we will lose track of things in the busyness of our days, and we will once again lift our heads to hear about someone who welcomes us, invites us along – to become fishers of a different sort. Soon enough, we will doubt, and argue, and we will see miracles. We will stand in wonder, and say, “Rabbi! Teacher! Friend! Physician! Messiah!”

It is all going on right now. Everything that has gone before, everything that comes later, it is all here, happening now, to you; to me. And all the aches and sorrows of our past are here, alongside our joys, and we empty them into the boundlessness of Jesus, into the infinite Word, until they commingle into One, Holy Oneness.

How can I keep from singing?

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