Experiencing Holy Week: By His Wounds
“Pay attention to what happens in the next few days. Pay attention to what goes on around you and within you. Pay attention to the water on your feet and the roughness of the towel in your hand. Pay attention to the softness of the bread and the sting of the wine in your throat. Pay attention to the brusqueness of the kiss and the splinters of the cross. Pay attention to the coldness of the tomb and the terror that clutches your heart. Pay attention to the brightness of the dawning light and the life that bursts forth.” —Br. James Koester, SSJE, from “Brother, Give Us a Word,” a daily email sent to friends and followers of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist (ssje.org), a religious order for men in the Episcopal/Anglican Church.
I remember reading this quote one Holy Week when one of my childhood wounds had been painfully opened. My “not good enough” button was pushed. As I came out of the cloud of humiliation, I read this piece about Jesus’ wounds. In some very, very small way I had experienced a wound.
The “brightness of the dawning light” is indeed knowing I had been experiencing Holy Week fully through the woundedness, the sadness, the humiliation as well as the joy that I anticipated. I remember another Holy Week when there was a complication from a medical procedure I had performed that week. I still recall the sadness I felt for the harm I caused to my patient instead of bringing healing. I could only imagine how my patient must have felt. I realized how difficult it was and is to admit that we are human and make errors, accepting responsibility for our mistakes.
Today I also experience life bursting forth as I try to reach out of myself toward someone else I know who has been wounded, for yesterday I was very painfully reminded what it is like. Frederick Buechner talks about what a difference it makes knowing that Jesus not only is always beside us in our suffering, but that he himself suffered as well.
We identify with Jesus. He identifies with us. We identify with others. He heals our wounds as we reach out to others. We are constantly called to community where we can begin to accept our humanness, our sins and mistakes. There we learn to be forgiven, healed, loved, and blessed.
In community there is redemption and resurrection.
These words from Brother Koester are difficult since this week we will again only know so many of these parts of Holy Week from past memories. Bring those memories back to the present with all your senses: touch, smell, taste, see, hear. Let them be such a part of you that they are now more real and powerful than in the past.
Joanna. joannaseibert.com