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Technically I am offline - meaning I'm not reading the news or other blogs, neither am I posting - I assembled a few photos for Good Friday, but that is all. Nevertheless, I thought I would jot down a few thoughts from my observance of these Holy Days - just personal reflections, nothing more, nothing important either.
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Holy Thursday I prayed a rosary late, as if I was with him in the garden, and then like the disciples I went to bed. I was actually awakened 3 or 4 times during the night, and each time my first thought was his prayer, alone, and I united myself to his prayer, wondering about it, until I fell back to sleep. The last time I woke up it seemed to me Our Lord would have been arrested by then... at least confronted by Judas and the soldiers. I wondered why the youth who ran off was wearing only a loin cloth, and in my sleepiness, I began to fixate on that question.
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When I got up, my usual prayer, "Show us your face O Lord, and we shall be saved" seemed particularly poignant, recalling how Jesus looked at Peter after he had denied him 3 times... and naturally, I became distracted by the thought of trying to figure out at what time the cock first crows.
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Later, my prayer focused upon the passage from Isaiah on the suffering servant... watching... following... listening in silence. Throughout the first hours of the day I kept wondering precisely where Jesus would have been at each moment - unable to recall the exact timeline of specific events.
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Somehow, Holy Week, and especially Good Friday, has always been very real for me - when I've observed it I should say - there was a time I wasn't practicing my faith. These days seem to me to be timeless moments however - the Sacred Triduum that is. There is no Mass, and I tell myself it is because we are living it as we solemnly commemorate the Passion, hence every moment is a sacrament, every thought of what went on in Jerusalem so many centuries ago, becomes a sort of transport back in time - as the events are re-presented for the soul. Certainly the Passion is re-presented liturgically, and if one happens to be a mystic, perhaps they are re-enacted actually, but for the ordinary soul who just tries to pray - to be present to Christ in his sufferings - it seems to me time is suspended - and we are somehow there. But I don't know how that is.
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Thus, even as we go about our daily duties and occupation, amid all the distractions and diversions which comprise our days, sounded by all the debates and conflicts of our times "as we make our rounds of the city" - as soon as we think of him, we glimpse him looking at us, "standing behind our wall... gazing through the windows... peering through the lattices..."
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Nothing can separate us from his love... "Stern as death is love, relentless as the nether-world is devotion; it's flames like the blazing fire of his heart... Oh garden-dweller, my friends are listening for your voice... let me hear it!" *
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Art: Christ Carrying His Cross - Giampietrino
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*Scripture adapted from the Song of Songs
Terry: Superb post
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