Anger, Expectations, Palms & the Crucifix

In England, a vicar was attacked by “Asian youths” and beaten badly enough to be brought to the hospital.

The Reverend Alan Green, Area Dean for Tower Hamlets, said it was the latest in a series of “faith hate” crimes in the borough.

He said: “It was a nasty cowardly attack. There were several groups in the churchyard and two from one group attacked him and the other group came and helped him back to the house.

“He was kicked and punched in the head as he lay on the ground, I believe that what was shouted was ‘you f***ing priestî before they attacked him.

“He’s still in hospital because he lost a lot of blood following the attack.

“There are one or two incidents of faith hate every month across the borough and across all faiths.

In the past some parish members had been taunted, “this should be a mosque; you should not be here.”

Hmph. Imagine that. Church of England should not be in England. A bit arrogant, no?

Holy week begins. The week in which we are most mindful of Christ’s passion becomes an exercise in trust.

From Deacon Greg Kandra:

For close to two thousand years, we have gathered like this, in places like this, to light candles and chant prayers and read again the ancient stories of our deliverance and redemption.

But are we aware of what we are doing? Do we understand what it means? Do we realize the price that was paid? A proper accounting is impossible. The ledger—His life, for our souls—seems woefully unbalanced.

So try this. This week, take a moment in each day that passes to wonder: What was He doing during this time of that one week all those centuries ago? What was crossing His mind on Monday, on Tuesday, on Wednesday? What sort of anguish? What kind of dread?

Has anything we have ever worried about, or lost sleep over, or agonized about, even come close?

He was a man like us in all things but sin. He must have been terrified, His mind buzzing with questions. Long after the others had drifted off to sleep, did He stay awake and worry? Maybe He sat up alone, late at night, whittling a piece of wood, the way His father had taught Him, until a splinter sliced His skin, drawing a rivulet of blood. He might have flinched and thought: Well, this is nothing. And still it stings. How intense would the pain of death become? How long would it last? How much humiliation would He be forced to endure, stripped and bleeding? And: What about His mother? Is there anything He could do to spare her from this?

As you shop for Easter baskets and dye, think of this. Ponder this. Wonder about it. Make it a kind of prayer.

And then, remember what we are doing, and why.

Because, of all the calendars in all of human history, this is the week that changed the world.

And one of my posts from a while back on Mary and the Crucifix:

…anger at God is normal. And God has big shoulders, He can take it.

I have found that when it is too much to think of God, it’s easier to think of Mary, who “never did anything to deserve it,” who spent her whole life only saying “yes” to Him, and in service to His biggest project, ever…but who still had to stay at the foot of her son’s cross and watch him die a most horrible death, after having endured terrible cruelty.

Even she didn’t know what was going to happen next. A mother grieves the unbearable loss of her son, through Passover, and then goes to anoint his body only to find it gone!

What sort of torment is this? Then he is back – but he is no longer hers alone, if he had ever been – and for the rest of her life, as she watches His church take shape and form, and helps where she can, she still has all of those memories – the memories a mother cherishes – of an infant tugging at the collar of her gown, looking to nurse, of her son and his loving six-year-old hugs, the scraped knees, the scampish days, the meals they shared…none of this could have been easy for Mary to remember or to reconcile with her human self, or her maternity. He is God. But he was her son, and always will be. He is her son. Her little lad. Her God.

And this is why we call Mary the “Help of Christians.” When it gets very hard, when we feel a little disconnected from God, whether we want to be disconnected or not, when we feel we have been given an unjust burden, we can look at Mary and realize that yes, she kept the faith, but she knew everything we know about how hard life can be. She’s lived through it, and if we ask her to, she’ll pray for us in our suffering. The cross. The Mother. The Son. Nothing in the Gospels is extraneous, or there without purpose. It is all meant for us, for our understanding and our consolation, too.

People often ask me why Catholics find it necessary to keep the Crucifix before them. “The victory was in the resurrection, not the death…Catholics focus on the wrong thing – the cross should be empty…”

Well, yes. The victory is the resurrection, but its gotten to through the rest of it.

While the empty cross brings us hope and promise, we are still humans living human lives with all of the pain and frailty and questions and hurt that implies…and when one looks at the Crucifix, one finds not a morbid and bloody corpse, but The God Who Knows, not because he is conveniently all-knowing, but because He actually submitted to life, lived it, endured it, went through it all, just as we do.

Jesus lost his own beloved step-father, Joseph, he knows what we know. When we look at the Crucifix we see that there is no human situation that Jesus did not come to know. Feel betrayed? Feel humiliated? Being mocked and sneered at? Feel abandoned? Feel unjustly hurt? Feel loss? There, on that crucifix is the God who has known every one of those feelings, and has submitted to them – in order to save us, but also in order to draw us near, to gather us into a consolation, a consoling embrace that says…“I know what you’re feeling…I know what you’re thinking…we are actually all in this together, and quite outside of time.”

It’s hard to remember all that. The Crucifix is the reminder.