Holy Week Reflection
Brother Jesus Crucified, your gaze towards us
during the last week of your earthly sojourn
was no different from the way you looked towards us
throughout your whole life.
Your eyes mirrored the gaze of the Beloved One:
your Father and ours.
When we look into your eyes, we see the One
whom we have desired from our earliest days –
whether or not we have named that desire
as the yearning for You.
Yet it seems too good to be true
that you would love us for no reason.
We want to earn your love, do something great and glorious
so that we can be something in your sight.
Why do you love us – why should you love us -
we who as a world
are so intent on destroying ourselves in self-hatred?
Why do we get caught in the endless cycle
of illusion and violence century after century, and never learn?
Jesus speaks back to us:
I lived and died so you could know
that there is nothing you can do
to make Me love you more, or to make Me love you less.
Even if you as a world killed –
and still kill in innumerable disguises – the very Son of God,
I still say back “Father, forgive them.”
I still say back
that you do not know really what you are doing.
Nothing can put Me off loving you –
nothing in the past, the future or in the now.
I do not and cannot change My love for you;
it is you who pull back out of fear
and withhold your longings for Me.
Look upon Me, for I reveal the Heart of God.
I offer you and the world
a way through the wells of self-hate and despair
that block you from entering into celebrating
My eternal presence in the world.
All the sin and stupidities in the world
will not thwart My love.
The worst thing in human history
was for humans to kill their God;
the best thing in human history
was for humans to see My response.
My cross does not change the Father’s mind about you –
It is to change your mind so you can re-see.
I do not keep a register of wrongs; you do in your heart.
It is you who store up hurts and vengeances on your register,
and then try to get rid of them through playing the victim,
or making victims and violence.
Even though in words I preached about love of enemy,
I knew the only way to show you how to truly live and love
was to demonstrate it in my body.
On the cross, I defeated evil’s power to have the last word
by outstaring the darkness and overcoming evil with love
through radical forgiveness.
There is nothing My grace cannot transform into goodness.
I absorbed the hatred of human beings
by refusing to hurl it back in vengeance.
I bore the consequences of hatred,
and demonstrated another way to meet evil besides revenge.
I relinquished the need to punish and blame,
by re-seeing the enemy and out-loving the sin.
Where you see sin, I see a pain-filled soul.
Those who crucified me thought
that by crucifying me they would get rid of the fear.
I could see it was they – not I - who were trapped and pinned.
I, your crucified Brother,
am an image of what you continually do
to yourselves, to others, to the earth, to reality.
If you do not let Me transform your pain,
then you will surely transmit it to others
or flog yourselves mercilessly within.
You rightly meet the Eucharist with reverence –
why do you not meet yourself and the rest of creation
with the same reverence?
It is My Body disfigured in bomb-blasts.
It is My Blood spilt on the streets.
We reply:
Jesus, your life and death show us
there is another way to meet life.
As we gaze upon You, we see that
we as individuals and nations do not have to try to be gods,
for You are to be our only God.
We and our nations do not have to try to be better than others,
for You told us that who we are is who we are in God.
We do not have to be approved of and respected,
for You told us we are already God’s beloved.
We do not have to play blame games, hoard and scrub our souls
because You knew there is no identity
to bolster, construct, prove and protect.
You descended into hell
so You could meet us in co-solidarity
in our own ice cube hells of separateness –
whether in Brisbane, Baghdad or Tel Aviv.
So when we “look on the one who is pierced”,
You invite us to die with you in solidarity –
to resist exporting our fears onto others.
You became the Scapegoat
so we would not have to make scapegoats of each other,
and keep perpetuating the cycle of killing and violence.
Because of you, we can model a new way – Your Way –
to live fully humanly.
May we not just worship You, but be You for the world.
Into your hands we commend our spirits and Your beloved world.
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