Our Holy Week journey with God

Today, Holy Thursday, we join our Lord Jesus Christ through His Last Supper with His disciples, His agony and arrest in the Garden.

On Good Friday, we retrace His passion and death on the cross.

Then on Sunday, we rejoice with all, grateful to God our Father for giving us all His only Son to redeem us through the cross and triumphantly restore us, through His resurrection, to God and our final dwelling place.

Christ’s triumphant entry amidst the cheering and acceptance of the crowd last Palm Sunday ended abruptly. The same crowd that worshipped Him Sunday turned against Him and called for Him to be crucified days after!

We cannot fully fathom how deep Christ’s pain and grief may have been seeing the sudden change of hearts of those who adored Him earlier in the week but within days, called for His crucifixion and death!

Jesus Christ certainly did not deserve His passion and crucifixion that were meted out to criminals and thieves during that time.

He came to save and redeem us all; instead, in return, He was unjustly, severely punished for false charges by an unruly mob led by religious/political leaders driven by greed for power and position!

Christ never deserved the abusive, disrespectful, verbal, physical, psychological, mental, emotional punishment from the guards, from the crowd, from the elite.

Nor did He deserve Judas’ betrayal and Peter’s denial.

Yet through all these, Jesus remained silent and obedient, focused on doing God the Father’s will, bent on completing His mission of salvation and redemption.

At the Garden, Jesus did verbalize His pain/His angst – “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Yet not as I will, but as You will.”

Ultimately, Jesus chose His Father’s will - a beautiful manifestation of the triumph of love over hate, of spirit over flesh, of complete obedience to God’s unconditional love for all.

In His last words, Jesus Christ again raised to God our Father His genuine struggle between His humanity and His divinity.

Unto His death, Jesus showed instead the triumph of forgiveness and obedience over His genuine experience of physical pain of being crucified and of the deeper human agony of being forsaken.

By choosing God and love, Jesus emerges victorious over physical death and restores us all in our divinity, our union with God and His heavenly dwelling for us all.

Beyond His pain, passion, crucifixion and death, Jesus Christ’s love for God the Father and for us all results in our redemption, our salvation, our life beyond this earth, our eternal love and return to our heavenly dwelling.

By instituting the Holy Eucharist during the Last Supper, Jesus Christ assured His presence in this earth with all of us anytime we seek and accept His Body and Blood at mass.

When daily struggles and challenges are too difficult to bear, we are reminded that beyond the cross, beyond crucifixion is redemption, salvation, victory.

Holy Week reminds us that we are not just human, we are holy, divine, made in God’s image and likeness, God’s breath, God’s spirit in us.

Christ’s resurrection reminds and reassures us that, though Jesus Christ briefly lived 33 years here on earth, life for us all really will not end in this earth, but will go on forever, throughout time, throughout eternity like the Risen Christ.

So much more to ponder and reflect on, be optimistic and grateful about our todays and tomorrows this Holy Week.

May all of you relish your moments of encounter with God during your Holy Week journey.

May the message of Resurrection, of God’s love and salvation for us all, overcome and end for us all the uncertainty and anxiety of the ongoing Middle East and other crises affecting the whole world!