Listen, and be Christ-Like
Holy Week & Easter

We have entered another Holy Week. It is the highlight of the Christian liturgical calendar, for it represents the high point and purpose of Jesus's life on earth. This year Holy Week has a unique significance.

We begin Holy Week with Palm/Passion Sunday. This is a preview of the entire week. We began with the joyous and glorious heralding of Jesus as he enters Jerusalem as the Messiah. The crowd laid down palm branches before him and cried out, "Hosanna," which means "save us now." The people were looking for a Messiah to save them politically, militarily, and spiritually. They wanted the complete restoration of the theocracy of Israel. Jesus did not meet their expectations. By the end of Holy Week the readings have them calling out, "Crucify Him!" We Christians would say that he far surpassed them by bringing a spirituality applicable to all people on the face of the earth in a way that transcends all political or military systems. It takes spiritual eyes to see this greater vision. It takes the gift of the Spirit within us.

We are also facing our own set of political and military challenges. Terrorism, US involvement in wars in the Middle East, a new presidential administration enacting new and challenging programs and laws, the recession, health care, and unstable patterns in the climate and the environment have brought a feeling of great unrest to the American people. Like the people of Israel long ago many more conservative Christians and Catholics are looking for someone to deliver them from what they perceive as a socialist revolution within our own country. Progressives and liberals are frustrated because they do not see the new administration as going far, or fast enough in implementing these changes. These are, indeed, questions and challenges to the basic founding principles of the United States of America and its development through its ongoing history in the modern world. Many are having their faith shaken. Political, economic, and environmental crises often make us feel that our whole world is being turned upside down.

We are also facing scandals in the Catholic Church of historic proportions. Some would say that this scandal rivals the great Schism of East and West in the 11th century, or the Protestant Reformation which so divided, fragmented and splintered the church. The sexual abuse scandal has reached not only our bishops, but even our pope. The laity of the church love the Catholic faith, but they simply will not stand for the abuse of their children. Action and reformation are now the cries of even the most faithful and conservative of Catholic Christians. In fairness to the bishops and pope, most of them faced the abuses according to the medical and legal advice given them decades ago. And this scandal is indicative of a broader problem in the other churches, and in secular culture in our time. But the troubling reality still faces us; there have been abuses on a broad and widespread scale. As scripture says, "Judgement begins in the house of God." The church is responding aggressively to stopping these abuses in the future. Some would say they have not responded aggressively enough. Regardless, it shakes our faith to discover such widespread abuse among those whom we have trusted for decades and centuries as representatives of God among His people.

Jesus brings a spiritual answer that transcends all of these passing problems of this world. His answer is bigger than any political, economic, or military system at any particular point in time. He is bigger than the particular popes and bishops of the church. He IS the Catholic Church. His answer transcends time. But it also has a positive effect on space and time!

The answer of Jesus Christ is the simplicity of the cross and resurrection. This answer is simple, but certainly not easy. It calls us to die to the old self so that the original self God created us to be when we were conceived in our mother's wombs might be "born again" in the Spirit of God. This is accomplished and offered to every believer by the dying and rising of Jesus. We take up our cross daily so that we might rise with him daily as a new creation in Christ.

What is this new creation? It is the victory of love over hatred, self-giving over self-obsession, forgiveness over judgment, Justice over vengeance, kindness over cruelty, listening to the needs of others rather than always being ready to shout our own opinion, meekness and humility over arrogance and pride. The greatest place to look for the character of this new creation in Christ is the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, specifically the "blessings," or the Beatitudes. We can also look to the softer side of St. Paul in his great "love chapter," in 1 Corinthians 13, or the beautiful fruit of the Spirit in his letter to the Galatians, or the great description of Jesus Christ's self emptying in Philippians 2. These are all wonderful meditations on what it is to be a new creation in Christ.

Living in this new Christlike character we can face all of the problems and challenges of our modern world as genuine peacemakers. We can love our enemy, listen to our opponent, forgive the offender, and bring a merciful justice to the vengeful. While still maintaining our own position of faith and morality, we can learn how to love in a way that only Jesus Christ can bring.

But like with those first citizens of Jerusalem who joyously welcomed Jesus at the beginning and turned on him in the end, we sometimes find such high ideals difficult to maintain when the inevitable trials and tribulations of this life challenge us. It is easy to love those who love us, listen to those who agree with us, forgive those who forgive us, and so on. It is difficult to truly be Jesus to those we perceive as crucifying us because they disagree with us, oppose us, and treat us badly because of our belief. But this is precisely when we must bring the answer that only Jesus can bring through our own life as Christians.

Jesus never said that this would be easy. It might indeed cost us our life. But it can be done! Through the power of the Spirit within us we can say with St. Paul, "it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me." We can be, "like Christ," or, "Christian." We can also be, "Catholic," or, "universal and full" of the very person and Spirit of Jesus. This is what it means to be a Catholic Christian!

This is what we celebrate during Holy Week every year. Let it take on special significance this year as we face our own unique set of challenges and trials within the modern world today. Let’s not be like the Israelites of old who accepted Jesus gladly when he seemed to meet their own agenda, but renounced and crucified him when he called them to something more, something spiritual, something wonderful, and something that would bring salvation to the whole world if only we would listen. This Holy Week let's listen, let's pray, and let's learn what it is to truly be Christian.

John Michael Talbot