Palm Sunday and the passion of Jesus add some extra movement and voices to our celebration. As we begin Holy Week, we are urged and challenged to embrace Jesus on more than just an intellectual and cerebral level, but to engage our bodies, minds and spirits on this faith walk with Jesus.
As we draw closer to Easter, we should ask: Have our Lenten practices have given us hope that we will be different by Easter, or have we simply lived this season so that we’ll come out just the same or worse than we started it? It is possible to have the appearance of being disciples of Jesus, who are continually converting our hearts and minds to Him, and yet still have no interior change or conversion of mind and heart. That is not what our Catholic faith is supposed to be, but many of us live that way. We use the practice of our faith to feel satisfied with our minimum fulfillment of the law and even sometimes judge others who are appear to be lacking in faith or who aren’t as holy.
We still have some time to let this be a season of deeper conversion. What is keeping any of us from doing that?
As we focus on Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem and then participate in His passion and death, we are reminded that faith is supposed to be a high-cost endeavor. It is supposed to be sacrificial and humbling. It is supposed to change our lives and allow us to throw off our old understandings of love and forgiveness and to take on the deeper understandings of compassion and mercy. It makes sense that we would want to stay the way we are, because most of us have set up our status quo the way we like it, to serve ourselves and those we love around us. But Jesus places a new pattern of life in front of us that leads to the cross and the resurrection.
Being familiar with the passion and death of Jesus doesn’t necessarily mean that we understand the implications for our own lives. It’s important to remember that Jesus gave His life for others — no one took it from Him. That implies that the change and conversion that Jesus is calling us to is meant to be personal and voluntary. It means that instead of just following the laws that somebody else gives us, we are meant to look at our lives and find ways to empty ourselves for the sake of others, especially those most in need. That example, set for us by Jesus, is meant to be the pattern of our lives. Our Lenten practices are meant to be the practice of the habits we want to form as we go through Easter and the rest of our year. We are meant to practice things that will change our lives, not leave them the same as they were. Lent is not a temporary pause in the action, but a training period to deepen our lives.
What might each of us do in the remaining weeks leading up to Easter to practice self-emptying and sacrificial love? Looking at the shape of our lives, where can we make room for that kind of behavior by emptying out something else? Where might we allow fear of change to keep us from doing exactly what Jesus asked us to do? Do we believe that emptying ourselves for the sake of others will free us from fear and anxiety and allow us to experience more deeply the resurrection Jesus promises? Do we put faith in the life of Jesus enough that it becomes the template for our own lives, or do we dismiss him as a person from another age and another time?
May we awaken in a deeper way to the call of Jesus to join Him in living, dying and rising.
Father Wester is pastor of All Saints Parish in St. Peters.