9781644135945

The Easter Cycle
a deep earnestness and a quiet determination the Lord goes to meet His death. His disciples
(His Church) are to go with Him. They are one with Him. “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem” (to
Holy Week, to Easter). Of every Holy Sacrifice of the Mass it could be said: “Behold, we go up
to Jerusalem,” to the mount of Calvary, to relive there with our Lord the mystery of His suffering
and death. Our whole life as Christians is nothing else but an ascent to Jerusalem and the
sharing of His painful journey. During the season of Lent the liturgy will banish all our doubts
and scruples and will clearly show us the path. “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem,” to suffer with
our Master, to die with Him, and to rise with Him to eternal life. “Through battle to victory”
must not remain empty words. By dying we live. “Yet so, if we suffer with Him, that we may be
also glorified with Him” (Rom 8:17).
“And they understood none of these things, and this word was hid from them, and
they understood not the things that were said.” The apostles had now been with Him for
three years. He had taught them carefully, and as the incarnate Son of God, He had given
them an example of humility, patience, and zeal. Still their thoughts are earth-bound. Their
hopes are still based on a national hero to throw off the Roman yoke and establish a Jewish
kingdom. And these twelve apostles dream of obtaining the preferred places and honors
in this kingdom. “They understood none of these things” when He spoke to them of the
kingdom of God and told them that His kingdom is not of this world but is founded, not
on national or political power, but on suffering and the cross. They are still blind although
they have been so long in the company of Him who came to be the light of the world. The
doctrine of suffering and of humility is often an unwelcome doctrine even to pious souls.
The blindness of the apostles afflicts us also.
We are now approaching the season of Lent, Good Friday, the cross and suffering. The
Church bears witness to the fact that the contemporary world has lost the spirit of true penance.
The world lets Christ make His painful journey unaccompanied. We beg Him to spare us
suffering. We admire the Christian heroes of the cross, the martyrs and saints of the Church,
and celebrate their feasts. Yes, they are wonderful, we say, but we are incapable of their heroism
and love of the cross. Modern Christians, both in the world and in the cloister, have forgotten
how to appreciate and love the cross. The love of the cross has too small a place in our spirit, in
our life, in our heart (1 Cor 1:17). We have forgotten how to treasure the cross of Christ (Gal
6:14). We would be ashamed to have it said of us that we knew nothing “but Jesus Christ, and
Him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2). We read and meditate devoutly on the chapter from the Imitation
of Christ, “The Royal Way of the Cross,” but it remains for us just a beautiful theory. We read
and sing the formula: Nos autem gloriari oportet in cruce Domini nostri Jesu Christi (“We ought
to glory in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ”). We sing, “I am dead to the world and the world
to me”; but it is all merely a theory. For most of us the axioms remain mere axioms. We join
our Lord daily in His mystical suffering and death in the Sacrifice of the Mass; yes, we even
receive the sacrificed God in our heart that He may fill us with the spirit of sacrifice, with His
love of suffering. Every day we encounter Christ in His suffering, but we understand “none of
these things,” not even those of us who are baptized Christians, priests, and religious.
“Lord, that I may see” (Gospel), the Church cries out when the Lord appears in our midst in
the Mass today. “Lord, that I may see.” She begs that her children may learn to understand again
the mystery of the cross and the lesson of Good Friday.
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