We celebrated the Passion of The Lord at 3pm today. There was, once again, a very full congregation and I was glad to see this. I’m thankful to all who took part in the liturgy and to all present.
I shared a short reflection after the reading of the The Passion. I hadn’t altogether planned on doing so but listening again to the reading today, I was struck by how little Jesus said. I decided to share a thought around that, picking some though not all the lines he spoke.
“Who are you looking for?” They answered “Jesus, the Nazarene” but they were not looking for him out of any sense of respect or loyalty. Rather, their search was to bring about his demise. I suggested we might hear him ask that question of us today: “Who are you looking for?” and that our answer, though the same as theirs, might be from a better place. A place of wanting to know more about Jesus and about allowing him into our lives.
“Those who are on the side of truth, listen to my voice.” Again, it strikes me that there’s a direct invitation and maybe even challenge to us to be on the side of truth. No room for gossip or negativity, no room for envy or spite, no room for hatred or revenge. The side of truth asks us to be people of justice, people of honour – people.
“This is your mother.” is one of the few phrases recorded from the Cross. It’s as if Jesus is putting family centre stage at the most vulnerable and, perhaps, crucial stage of his public ministry. This year we celebrate the World Meeting of Families when people from all over Ireland, indeed all over the world, will congregate in Dublin to reflect on family life. It is put before us as an example of decent living and a road map for harmony. On the other hand, we are discussing the possible attack of family life at its most vulnerable stage, in the very earliest days of its existence and maybe the Lord is calling us to day to a renewed value of life.
“This is your son.” again, a call to enter into relationship with Our Lady as “mother of the church” and to ensure a lasting place of welcome for her in our homes.
“I am thirsty.” We might reflect today on the cause of the Lord’s thirst. Having reflected, we might seek to do something as individuals and community to quench that thirst in a way more rooted in decency than vinegar on a hyssop stick. We have, within us, what it takes to satisfy his thirst since that thirst is surely for a people who understand his message and seek to follow his ways.
“It is accomplished.” These final words of Jesus are maybe a call to us to live life in such a way that when our “hour” comes, we may leave this world knowing we did our very best to live life in a way that helped rather than hindered, encouraged rather than criticisesed and built up rather than tore down.
I was also mindful, though I didn’t say this in the church, that most of Jesus’ interactions were with individuals rather than the crowd. He spoke to Pilate, Peter, Mary, John and seemed to put little, if any, energy into trying to dialogue with the hostile crowd. Maybe there’s a message there about engaging with one another, one by one, rather than taking on the crowd. At the end of the day, it has to be personal.