We have just celebrated the week of weeks in the Christian calendar – Holy Week – where we commemorate the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In Holy Week we are called to unite ourselves and follow the way of the cross of Jesus which leads to the resurrection.
It is not merely reading about it in the Scriptures or praying about it, but we are called in our own lives to follow the Jesus.
Paul reminds us in his letter to the Philippians: “All I want is to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and to share his sufferings by reproducing the pattern of his death. This is the way I can hope to take my place in the resurrection of the dead. Not that I have become perfect yet: I have not yet won, but I am still running, trying to capture the prize for which Christ Jesus captured me.”
Our life is modelled after the mystery of Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection.
We are certainly living in a period of suffering with the tragic war in Ukraine, poverty, injustice, inequality, and hatred.
However, we believe in a God who was in the very midst of the suffering, who experienced poverty and rejection.
The Cross is the sign and example of Christ in this very midst. A sign of his compassion and love. Our God is not a distant God, but one who is present in the pain and sufferings of life.
At this current period, we are certainty sharing in a lot of sufferings throughout the world and ‘reproduce the pattern of his death’ knowing that the resurrection is in sight. This is our hope, which is firmly based on the historical reality of the resurrection.
“Why look among the dead for someone who is alive? He is not here; he is risen.”
Christ is risen! Let us run to tomb to encounter the Risen Lord!
Canon Michael Dennehy, English Martyrs Church, writing on behalf Churches Together in Reading.
