But the torture and betrayal of those days call us to live a life that is
By George Valadie
I can’t know for sure, but I’m thinking it will likely be Holy Week when this column arrives at your home. At the risk of being scandalous, and possibly excommunicated, I’ve never really cared for the term Holy Week. To me it just feels like we humans misnamed it.
And it was in fact us humans who named it.
God certainly didn’t. Neither did Jesus nor Mary nor the Apostles left standing in the wake.
As early as the second century, the Greeks and Romans had instead begun to refer to it as the “Great Week,” as they sought to commemorate the “great” things God had done.
It is believed it was St. Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, who later (fourth century) termed it “Holy Week” in an effort to signify the sacredness of what we do during these days.
It stuck. And yes, what we do is in fact holy and should be treated that way. But that seems to make the whole thing all about us. And what we do. Rather, shouldn’t we consider what that week was like for Jesus—and his Dad?
Can you imagine?
It’s not an uncommon question; you may have even considered it yourself at one time or another. “If you knew your time on earth was coming to an end, how would you spend the last of your earthly moments?”
His divinity certainly knew the end was coming. In fact, He knew exactly where it would happen and when and how and who would do it. He knew who would betray Him and who would deny Him, who would spit at Him and who would pierce His side. He knew who would cry and who would mock and who would ask for mercy in their own final moments reaching out from the cross next to His.
After all, His divinity knew everything about everything. And though unable to be as sure, His human side had to have sensed it, too.
As we all know, it’s one thing to know something but quite another to be face-to-face with imagining it, dreaming about it, having to live with it, and feeling it in your gut.
Human and divine—both parts surely suffered.
Especially since He knew the end would come painfully. Extremely so.
For Him and His Father, I’m guessing they’d have considered it to be more of a Horrible Week. Perhaps a Horrific Week. A Week from Hell. Anything but Holy.
With two natures in His one person, I imagine Jesus was simultaneously both drawn to and wished to avoid Jerusalem. On the way there for sure but looking to delay the inevitable.
In the week before the week, Jesus and His disciples made side stops in Bethany where Lazarus had died, then the town of Ephraim, followed by a brief layover in Jericho where He dined with Zacchaeus, a Roman tax collector. The same Romans whom He knew would be waiting for Him at the end of His next—and final—week. How does one do that exactly? Dine with the enemy. The one who will kill you.
“Zacchaeus, get down out of that tree. I’m coming to your house for dinner tonight.”
“What? Is he serious? Zacchaeus? Doesn’t he know who that guy is?” Everybody else in Jericho knew him. Guessing everybody hated him, too. Though short in physical stature, he had no shortage of money. His wealth, which they also knew about, had resulted from a career in which he had perfected cheating, swindling, and extorting the Jewish citizens in his region.
And everyone knew that, too.
With His death getting ever closer, Jesus did what Jesus always did. He took time to save yet one more soul. And Zacchaeus promised to make amends. “Today salvation has come to this house because this man, too, is a descendant of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost.”
Seek the lost and save them. Isn’t that how you’d spend your final days?
I think I’d have chosen to spend the time with those closest to me. And hope they’d protect me. Empathize with me. Pray with me. Encourage me.
He did that, too. And that’s when the bad week He knew was coming … well, it got worse. Yet another reason the week couldn’t have felt all that holy. He sweat blood while they slept in the garden. His moment of betrayal came during a moment of prayer. Peter lost his cool, and a soldier lost part of his ear. “I’m down to a few hours … have these guys not learned anything?”
Loyal? Most hid in a room, and that was before Peter’s whole “who him? never saw the guy before” thing, uttered in cowardice. Uttered by the same man Christ had declared best suited to be the foundation of His Church and to whom He had given the keys to the kingdom.
Peter would have locked himself out if the Father hadn’t been as forgiving as Jesus said He would be.
Speaking of the Father, He had sacrificed His son for this very reason. To suffer. And die. And be treated in every inhuman manner created by humans.
He hadn’t created the gift of free will so that people would use it this way. It had to have been hard enough to stand by and watch as they mistreated one another for centuries … but watching your own Son have to endure it? Is there anything worse?
No, it wasn’t a very holy week—dreadful or sickening, maybe—but not all that holy. We probably deserved another flood. Instead, He just keeps calling us to do better. To be better.
To be holy.
Dear God—We’d like to say we would have done better had we been there. But is anyone really sure? We haven’t always been that good at being here. Amen.
George Valadie is a parishioner at St. Stephen Church in Chattanooga and author of the book “We Lost Our Fifth Fork … and other moments when we need some perspective.”
