Reflections

Week 5

Our Lord told Mary’s sister Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life.” He assured the grieving woman that he offered a life that would overcome the horror of death which took her brother Lazarus from her. With only a word, Jesus would free Lazarus from the bonds of death. Yet here we see that same Christ weeping as he seeks out the dead man. We are reminded that our Lord, all-powerful as he is, is the God who desired to come among us in our sorrows. In as much as he reached out to every part of our lives, now we can in turn reach out to him on every occasion, even onto death, and hope for the life he will bring.

Palm Sunday

The figure of Joseph of Arimathea cuts a radiant note of compassion through the darkest section of St. Matthew’s Gospel. Nearly all were distant from our Lord during the climatic moments of his Passion—the cries of “Hosanna” that had greeted Christ upon his entry to Jerusalem were replaced with curses and mockery as he exited the city under his cross. All the strewn palm branches from a few short days prior had surely been swept away and begun to fade. Yet, when all appeared to be lost, this Joseph enters the scene, asking that he may be allowed to draw near to the broken body of our Lord. This Joseph honors the flesh that had been desecrated by so many as he tenderly swaddles the Son of Man in a linen burial cloth and lays his Lord into the tomb which was once meant to be his own. This Joseph sets aside his own place, in what was to be the monument of his own family history, so that the death of Christ may become the defining moment of his own story. May we all hold the death of Jesus Christ so dear, so that his rising may in turn illuminate the whole of our lives.