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Tuesday of Holy Pascha Week
On Tuesday of Holy Pascha Week, our Lord Jesus Christ spent the day with the
disciples in the temple, teaching them by parables, telling them about the
Second Coming.
In His Steps - A Lenten Series
Today: The Judas in All of Us
Tuesday in
Holy Week
Today, again, our Savior sets out in the morning for
Jerusalem. His intention is to repair to the temple, and
continue His yesterday's teachings. It is evident that
His mission on earth is fast drawing to its close.
Bible Reading:
Opening Prayer:
Almighty ever-living God,
The Readings (alternate):
Isaiah 49:1-6; Psalm 71:1-6, 15, 17; John 13:21-33, 36-38
Daily Meditation:
Let me receive your forgiveness and mercy.
We experience the pain of his knowing
Our desire is to celebrate the gift being offered us.
It is too little, he says,
Tuesday of Holy Week Reflections
'Now has the Son of Man been glorified.' This is his response to the moment when
his fate is sealed and one of his close disciples, 'filled with Satan', leaves
the common table to betray him.
The act of personal treachery hangs strangely loose in the story without
explanation. No one is convinced he did it just for money. Inexplicably it seems
necessary because it brings the main player to his supreme moment.
We speak of glory in battle, glorious weather and the glory of God. But what is
this kind of glory that happens at a moment of defeat and disappointment. When
someone in whom we have placed our trust or hope lets us down or when a plan we
have been working on collapses it seems an odd time to speak of glory.
When you open a fresh scallop it firmly resists you. It clams its shell tight
against the probing knife you are trying to slip between the two hinged halves
of its protecting world. The art of this cruel act, without which there would be
no scallop farmers, is to find the muscle that holds it closed and slice through
it. Then the shell springs open, the luscious looking food is there and the food
chain continues.
We prefer not to see this done or to hear of it but it is part of the world we
inhabit. The ending of a life is the feeding of another in the chain of being.
One should acknowledge the individual sacrifice and feel the loss of life as
some native Americans are said to thank a tree before they cut it down.
If the end of a life is accepted in this humble way it is as if something opens.
The dark side of it is the shadow cast by the intense light that has been
released.
Tuesday Reflections from All Hallows in Leeds, England
Reading: 1 Corinthians 1.18-31
Reflection
Perhaps like people who cower away from the light, lest their own sins are
exposed, we cannot bear to be in the presence of total Love, so we destroy it.
The jealous, small-minded childishness of wanting to destroy what we cannot be
and cannot have. Or is it the weakness of Jesus we despise, the weakness that
reminds us of our own, which we try constantly to conceal and deny? His total
humanity reveals our inability to be human. God lets himself be pushed out of
the world onto the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is
precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
This is the foolishness of the cross to which Paul refers: this absurdity that
the story of a supposedly broken, defeated and executed prophet, healer and
lover of humanity becomes the story of God's saving action in the world and
potentially of God's saving action in us all.
This is standing with Christ, accepting the foolishness of the cross as the way
of salvation - that in this vulnerable Messiah is a truth that needs to be lived
and made known.
It is in accepting our brokenness and our vulnerability, acknowledging our
confusion and our sense of loss - in that lies the seeds of resurrection hope.
We are not perfect, and neither will we be perfect, but the way of love is not
about perfection but about forgiveness and healing. It is about being weak
enough to lament the realities of the pain of our world, the realities of our
own sorrow and confusion, and then again and again turning back to the light and
welcoming through love what it reveals. It is in accepting our brokenness that
we know we are loved, and we learn again what we were made to be and what we can
seek to become.
Ray Gaston
Prayer
O Jesus, stretch forth your wounded hands over your people to heal and to
restore, and to draw us to yourself and to one another in love. Amen.
Intercessions:
Let us pray to Christ our Savior, who redeemed us by his death and resurrection:
You went up to Jerusalem to suffer and so enter into your glory,
You were lifted high on the cross and pierced by the soldier’s lance,
You made the cross the tree of life,
On the cross you forgave the repentant thief,
Closing Prayer:
God of such unwavering love,
Help me to understand
May the Lord bless us,
Sources:
grant us so to celebrate
the mysteries of the Lord’s Passion
that we may merit to receive your pardon.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
The second Servant song shapes our reflection today
as we watch that amazing dinner scene on Tuesday of this passion week.
that he will be betrayed and denied.
Yet, the hour he is about to face is the hour of his Glory.
And he promises that where he is going, we will surely follow.
for you to be my servant,
to raise up the tribes of Jacob,
and restore the survivors of Israel.
I will make you a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach
to the ends of the earth.
Isaiah 49
by Laurence Freeman OSB
Lord, have mercy on us.
- bring your Church to the Passover feast of heaven.
- heal our wounds.
- give its fruit to those reborn in baptism.
- forgive us our sins.
how do I "celebrate"
the passion and death of Jesus?
I often want to look the other way
and not watch,
not stay with Jesus in his suffering.
Give me the strength
to see his love with honesty and compassion
and to feel deeply
your own forgiveness and mercy for me.
how to "celebrate" this week.
I want be able to bring
my weaknesses and imperfections with me
as I journey with Jesus this week,
so aware of his love.
protect us from all evil
and bring us to everlasting life.
Amen.
Creighton University Online Ministries - Praying Lent
The World Community for Christian Meditation (www.wccm.org)
All Hallows in Leeds, England
Lectionary of the Syriac Orthodox Church
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