Prayer Library Prayer

2009 Holy Week

For use the week of April 8 — Holy Week — there are three offerings for this week:

A Reflection on Holy Week

By Joseph Nassal, CPPS

During Holy Week, we gather in the emergency room. There's no time to lose — and everything to lose. This is the week when we make some space in the inner room so the paschal mystery—the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus — can have its holy way with us. When we do, we begin to see how the paschal mystery finds a home in our own story. We mark this spot with an "X" and note that this is the very place where hope is born.

As Holy Week begins, this is the place where we might start to empty our hearts of those attitudes that keep us from being true to the image of God within us. St. Paul advises us to take on the attitude of Jesus, who emptied himself, humbly accepting death - death on a cross. Because Jesus did not "deem" equality with God as something to be grasped at, but instead, emptied himself, this makes us "redeemable."

We have seen this paschal mystery of faith etched on the faces of patients who have struggled with illness and survived surgeries of every sort without yielding to despair. We have heard this paschal mystery of faith proclaimed in the voices of those who have suffered and say to us, "I would have never made it without my faith." We have felt this paschal mystery of faith in the embrace of those who have come to be with us in our pain and our loss. They come not with answers or explanations or pious predic­tions about how things will get better. No, they come because they have found that place of the paschal mystery in their own souls and stories, have tasted their own tears, know their own fears, but believe they are redeemable.

These are the people who, like Jesus, empty themselves so that God may fill them with the fullness of divine life. These are the people who have stood in that dark, damp place in the soul where the light has grown dim and tears have fallen like rain who are filled with a light that is not their own.

When we encounter this paschal mystery of faith, we are moved to silence. That is why the sign we sometimes see when walking or driving near a hospital: "Quiet, Hospital Zone" is the road sign we observe this week on our journey of recovery. More than any other week, Holy Week is the time to listen. And what will we hear?

"My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?" Jesus gives voice to the scream buried deep within our broken hearts. In this scream that splits the skies, that tore "the curtain of the temple in two, from top to bottom," is our profession of faith.

We believe in God's presence even when God seems absent.

This Holy Week invites us to tap this passion inside of each of our hearts. The passion of this Holy Week, found in the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus, is the passion to forgive and be forgiven. It is the passion to hollow out our lives of all resentment toward those who have hurt us. It is the passion to let whatever residue of guilt or shame that lingers in our souls to be wiped clean and redeemed. During this week, we remember how we are redeemed and reclaimed as God's beloved through the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

In these holy days, may we know God's passion and rediscover our own.

Let us pray together:

 

God of all Creation,
"though he was in the form of God,"
Jesus "did not regard equality with God something to be grasped"
But "emptied himself, taking the form of a slave."
In a world where many are grasping
for power, fame and fortune,
the highest place and the biggest payoff,
Jesus moves in the opposite direction.

During this Holy Week,
help us to tap the passion inside of each of our hearts.
Give us the grace to touch and taste again
the passion that moves us and motivates us,
sustains us in those dark and dreary days,
and strengthens us in those times when we are all alone.

May the passion of Christ
help us to know God's passion
and rediscover our own.

+ Amen.

 

 

A Reflection on Passover

By Joseph Nassal, CPPS

Every family has certain traditions that shape our life together, creating memories captured not only on film but etched on our minds and hearts. Around the tables of these family feasts, we tell the stories of our lives. These traditions change over the years, of course. The tables expand as the children grow and get married and have children. And, of course, illness and death creates some empty chairs around the table.

The Passover ritual reflects what it means to be a family of faith and teaches how memory plays an essential role in our faith and family traditions. "This day shall be a memorial feast for you," God tells Moses as he gives specific instructions on how to celebrate the Passover, "which all of your generations shall celebrate with pilgrimage to the Lord, as a perpetual institution."

The power of memory surfaces often in our faith story. For example, when God says to Moses and the people, "you shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien," the reason for such a law is simple: because the people were once resident aliens. They knew what it meant to be slaves who were oppressed and treated unjustly. They knew what it felt like to be strangers in a strange land. They knew in their bones the pain of torture and terror. God's message: do not forget where you come from or the freedom that was won for you by the work of God's hands.

The Passover affirms the covenant symbolized in the blood splashed on the "doorposts and the lintels" of the houses of the chosen ones to mark them as safe places. Here the art of hospitality is practiced—"If a family is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join the nearest household." To paraphrase the eloquent phrase of Alan Jones, the Passover affirms that God is the "bearer of the miracle that we matter."

It is this memory that recalls the history and hopes of our ancestors in faith and calls us into a deeper, wider relationship with God and with one another. It is this memory that challenges us to take down the fences and erase the lines that divide us. It is this memory that allows us to open doors for both stranger and friend and see the divine image, the godliness in each other. It is this memory that gives us the courage to overcome our fears as we translate the great commandments of love into compassionate action for one another.

At Passover, the youngest asks, "Why is this night different from every other night?" And the story is told of the difference God makes in our lives. The story is told so the memory lives and breathes in each of us and that we become the living memory of God's great love.

Someone is waiting to tell his or her story. Someone is rehearsing her story right now, longing for another to come and sit by her side. As the silence expands and deepens, we take a deep breath and ask, "Tell me your story." Conversation and storytelling are so essential in our recovery of our true self because our stories reflect our identity. When we know another's story, when we know another's pain and another's promise, and we find some common ground.

Let us pray together:

Compassionate God,
all the sacred rules of relationship,
all the holy ordinances that create order out of the chaos,
all the laws written on stone and etched upon our hearts
have a single source: compassion.

Your compassion and love for us is reflected
in the faces and the stories of those whose company we keep.
Bless our family and our friends,
bless our communities, colleagues, and coworkers.
bless all those we seek to serve with compassion and care.

May we take time to listen to each one's stories,
catch each one's tears,
hold each one's hurt,
and celebrate the hope that keeps us faithful
to this journey of recovering your presence among us.

+ Amen.

+ Amen.

 

 

A Reflection on Easter

By Joseph Nassal, CPPS

Many people have a "Do Not Resuscitate" or DNR order as part of their advance directives. But a few years ago the BBC carried a story about a retired nurse named Frances Polack who had taken an extraordinary step to make sure doctors did not prolong her life against her wishes. Frances was 85 at the time and living in Hampshire, England. She got a tattoo across the front of her chest that read, "Do Not Resuscitate." In explaining her decision to get the tattoo, she felt it was the only way to ensure that doctors take account of her wishes so that they would not try to restart her heart if she went into cardiac arrest. "By resuscitating me," she said, "they would be bringing me back from the dead only for me to have to go through it again."

While many can understand Frances Polack's wishes, followers of Christ are grateful that Jesus did not have tattooed across his chest, "Do Not Resurrect!" Such a DNR order would render Easter meaningless. If Christians did not believe in the power of the resurrection, we would be left with an endless Good Friday with nothing but crosses and losses littering the landscape of our lives. But because Jesus was raised from the dead, we are given a new lease on life — a life that will never end.

God's advanced directives from the beginning of time offer a holy order that we be people of life not death. From the very beginning of creation, God's power is directed toward life and light, not death and darkness. The world has more than enough merchants of death, people like Pilate who probably posted guards at the tomb of Jesus with DNR — "Do Not Resurrect" — signs everywhere.

The people of life are like the women who come to the tomb early that Sabbath morning who are luminaries of light and life, and capture this new creation to which Easter calls us. When they arrive at the tomb, they find "the stone had been rolled away." Another luminary, "a young man clothed in a white robe" tells them, "Do not be amazed! You seek Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified. He has been raised; he is not here."

Notice the angel doesn't say, "Do not be afraid." The angel says, "Do not be amazed!" These are the words we tattoo upon our hearts during Easter: "Do not be amazed!" Do not be amazed by the power of life over death. Do not be amazed by the courage of a single voice crying out in the night of injustice for peace. Do not be amazed how prayer can change our hearts and make us more accepting and loving toward those we find difficult to love. Do not be amazed that a small group of faith-filled people can change the world.

We believe that because Jesus did not have "Do not resurrect" tattooed on his chest but instead had the scars of the crucifixion on his hands, his feet, and his side, we are people of life not death. The resurrection of Jesus reveals and recovers our true self — made in God's image and likeness, we are children of God.

Though it is an amazing grace, do not be amazed anymore. We are God's beloved. Welcome home to our true self!

 

Let us pray together:

Eternal and Ever-living God,
on our journey of recovering your Divine Image
carried in each of our hearts,
we arrive at the empty tomb and celebrate the life that dwells within us.

May we not be afraid or amazed by the power of the resurrection.
May our faith in the victory of life over death
give us the courage not only to "keep the faith"
but to give it away!
To tell everyone we meet
by the way we live, the way we love,
that we are people of life, not death,
made in your image and likeness
and destined for glory.

+ Amen.