Holy Week is different this year.
It was sad to watch (not just watch, but remotely participate in, prayerfully and with as much reverent attention as possible) – – the Mass for Palm Sunday.
“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” Many feel abandoned at this time. Why has God allowed us to be plunged into this darkness? As I watched, I thought about the suffering that Christ went through. We must go the way that the Master went. If he suffered how can we be exempt? The Church is the Body of Christ. If the Head suffers, the Body suffers as well. God has allowed the Members of Christ to actively participate – – not just theoretically, but actually, concretely and experientially in the sufferings of Christ. We feel it. We enter into it. But if we share in the sufferings of Christ, we will certainly share in his glorious resurrection from death. It turns out that he really is the victorious king. Psalm 22, that Jesus also prays on our behalf), which begins with the words, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” ends in praise of God, “for he not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him.”