hopefully a holy week

In the Christian Liturgical Calendar, it’s Holy Week. And frankly, it’s been a hell of a Lent. CovidTide continues, with cases surging right now as many States and people relax protocols with vaccines becoming more available. But magical thinking won’t protect us. Two more mass shootings have occurred, and the trial of the former Minneapolis police officer who killed George Floyd began today. Two friends of mine have died, two masked, underattended, distanced funerals. And the town I now live in is embroiled in the revelation that anti-Semitic slurs were used as play calls by the High School football team. I’m heartsick and tired. Not a good way to enter this week.

Disenfranchised grief is grief that’s once removed, like trauma experienced by a friend or colleague, or deep sadness over violence one didn’t directly experience. I’ve read recently that a common response during the Pandemic to the question of “how are you?,” has been “oh, I can’t complain.” Well, why not? Some have been traumatized greatly, but haven’t we all been traumatized? I enter this holy week already grieving, angry, almost incapable of contemplating the mysteries of what we mark in this time.

But here it is: Palm Sunday, Passion Sunday just past; Maundy Thursday and Good Friday soon, Eastertide to follow. I’m so ready for resurrection, and not just resuscitation or a return to “normal,” but new life — radically new life. As Philip Carter writes, resurrection is “a unique, revelatory and redemptive interruption into how things are … not something we can see or understand directly, but by its light, we see everything else … resurrection is not just about the past, it is very much about the future, and it is always about transformation.”*

As we head into the hope forged in holy week, I offer this prayer:

Holy Comforter:

On the second Holy Week in this continuing Pandemic, we mark your Passion and sacrifice, never to fully understand the mysteries inherent in either. 

In this week of the remembrance of grief and loss, we ask that you continue to walk with us in our grief and loss: grief over those we’ve lost, grief over what we’ve lost, and grief over myriad injustices revealed in this time of crisis. We continue to grieve the loss of life, and the loss of living. In our grief, in our isolation and separation, and in this time of not knowing, keep company with us, Lord, healing us with your presence. 

And, knowing this: that the path to Resurrection must proceed from the tomb, please lead us from darkness into light, from illness into health, from sorrow into joy, and always with you before us, beside us, and within us.

This we ask in the name of the one in three, through whom all things are possible, God Creator, God Redeemer and God Sanctifier. Amen. Amen. Amen.

*From “Presence” (an International Journal of Spiritual Direction, December, 2020)