Holy Week. Holy?

Author: Padre Alejandro Cortés González-Báez  

 

 

So often we hear our elders say: "How times have changed." How often, of course, depends on how often we speak with our elders. Nowadays the only people who speak with elders are other elders. Yet, in those rare times, you might hear them say things like: "In my day one did didn't go to the beach during Holy Week, nor to dances, one didn't even listen to music."
These days, now that our society has become a factory for stress, God doesn't seem to fit in our lives. We don't have time to pray, we don't have time to go to church. For some even confessing their sins to a priest is a way of feeling good about themselves, not necessarily to ask God for forgiveness. Finally Holy week arrives and our painful reality is to escape. But where? Makes no difference, wherever. Let's take advantage of these "holy-days" to upholster the beaches with empty cans of Tecate beer.
Little by little mankind has lost its contact with the spiritual, the supernatural, and we have have left ourselves in the very narrow, dire straights of our planet, seemingly so large but which now seems insignificant to us. When a man loses faith in his transcendent faith, he clips his own wings. And he who was destined to soar in the heavens, continually crashes into the four walls which surround him in his seemingly so large world. He eventually dies. Without faith there is no hope and sadness is the traveling companion of those constantly on the run to "wherever." Or nowhere.
We invest small fortunes and monumental efforts in maintaining our health. We forget, by the way, one day, maybe even long before we die, we will slowly lose that health we cherish, that health we treasure and have paid treasures to maintain. An old friend used to say: " I will die with this body."
As Pope Benedict XVI reminds us: Each one of us has so much value in the eyes of God that He became Man Himself, to be able to suffer with us the same as we suffer, every pain, flesh and blood, every hurt, every betrayal that we have suffered. Lest we forget, we can read the Passion of Christ.
This is a very appropriate time to remember the words of José Luis Martín Descalzo: "What pained Our Christ the most on Good Friday weren't the nails or the lashes but rather the solitude, the loneliness, the abandonment by the ones He held dearest." We should ponder these words and ask ourselves - each one of us - if we aren't part of those "held dearest," and what would be our response to the betrayal of our master.
Martín Descalzo continues: "Our witness would not be convincing if it lacked joy, the happiness based on the Resurrection.
For many, fear of the cross prevents us from following the words of Jesus, to abandon ourselves to Him, and pick up our crosses daily. Let us not forget that the cross is also the plus sign, the sign for positive, The Cross is how Christ offered himself for the redemption of each of us. The Joy of Easter is our hope for eternal happiness.