By Ryan LeBlanc
In going up to Jerusalem, Jesus shows what his whole life on Earth means with maximum clarity.
Everything about Jesus teaches us his utter and complete willingness.
What is Jesus willing to do? Be close to us.
Every dusty road, every sought-out loner, every wave of crowds, every scab and sin he touched, demonstrated his complete, unconditional willingness to accept every person there was. He accepted the wounded with tenderness, the ill with healing, the obstinate with patient firmness, the doubtful with quiet, gentle, pure truth. Jesus of Nazareth embraced all of us as if we were a crying child; held us as if we were a magnificent flower; regarded us as if we were breathtaking art.
And both Holy Week and our own experience show us: he is so willing that he accepts from humanity its rejection, hate and violence, just to be close to us – when we are so unwilling.
The willingness of Christ to accept us shows us our own unwillingness to accept him.
Every Holy Week, the same chaotic senselessness: why are the priests, the soldiers, and finally the crowd so unwilling to accept Christ? Why at that moment when Pilate says, “Behold the man” who is under Rome’s power, bleeding from human brutality, does the mob cry out to crucify him who is willing? Why do his friends turn?
Encountering Jesus brought healing, forgiveness, belonging, life. He is the walking Eden, the place where human and divine persons accept each other. He is the solution to every pain and darkness that we carry from that broken act in the garden.
Why are we so unwilling to accept him? Why the crowds? Why me? Why you?
Holy Week leads to a cross that almost all his friends ran away from. Yet there is an image – not Biblical, but not contradictory – of Jesus kissing his cross: his culmination of willingness. He is willing to share his meal with cowards and traitors, willing to accept injustice at the hands of his own priests, willing to accept even tiny, fragile men pretending their violence made them gods.
Holy Week asks me: Why am I so unwilling to accept the source of all life and truth and goodness? What is it that I am running away from when I cannot bear to see the cross?
Christ is willing to be with me. To accept me as I really am.
Oh. I think that is it.
I don’t know about you, dear reader, but if you are anything like me, or the crowd, or the disciples, or the priests, or the soldiers, I offer this humble observation.
Christ is so radically willing to accept and embrace me as I am, that he exposes my unwillingness to even acknowledge, let alone accept, who I am, all the way down.
If I am to accept Christ this Holy Week, or at any moment, I have to be willing to go where he wants to go, that is, into my own heart. He wants to show me entire galaxies within myself, both the light and the dark, so that I can understand how much he loves me.
The difficult truth is that I do not always want to see everything there is about me, everything that Christ loves about me. Sometimes it is just too much. Too much light, too much honesty, too much glory. I know there is sin, darkness, weakness, loneliness way down there, and Jesus won’t stop until it is all healed.
I am not always willing to be the sinner who Jesus saves.
Early, early in the morning while it is still dark, someone takes my hand. His touch is warm and strong and kind. As the light gently spreads around me, I see a garden, lush and moist. I see steppingstones and delightful design. I breath the fragrance of fresh life. In this new place, lit enough for one step, I notice and I play and I enjoy.
Only with this care and guidance can I begin to accept this moment, and my place in it I am willing.
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Ryan LeBlanc is a Teacher Chaplain at E.D. Feehan Catholic High School in Saskatoon and a parishioner at the Cathedral of the Holy Family.