The Human Condition & The Week that Changed the World

The Human Condition & The Week that Changed the World

By Prof. Anthony Maranise, Obl.S.B.

From the perspective of one whose academic specialization is in spirituality / spiritual theology, it’s hard not to have a strong attachment to Holy Week in the Catholic-Christian tradition.

Spiritual theologians (or spirituality scholars) sort of live for this. This is our “wheelhouse”; it’s what we do.

Spiritual theology, in a Christian context, is the academic study of how people grow closer to God through practices like prayer, meditation, and worship. It explores the lived experience of faith, focusing on the transformative relationship between the individual and the divine, often drawing from scripture, tradition, and personal encounters with God.

So, spiritual theologians, quite literally study, explore (and only the best, truly believe) that there is this incredible dynamic between God, incarnate in Jesus Christ, and each individual human person who seeks after Him.

Naturally, that must necessarily involve and include the full range of human emotions as they are inextricably part of the human condition itself.

From the joy we experience on Palm Sunday with Jesus’ triumphal entry and lauded welcome into Jerusalem as Holy Week begins to how quickly betrayal reveals itself, jealousy gives way to bitterness, bitterness to real harm, real harm to the anguish of death, and then the profound experience of grief and eventually forgiveness and a return to joy— Holy Week takes us through it… and at “light speed.”

Consider it.

The Week that Changed the World begins joyfully with the crowds being extremely hospitable and acclaiming Jesus as their long-awaited King. “Hosanna! Hosanna to the Son of David!”

“What a difference a day makes?” That’s the phrase, right?

Well, for Judas Iscariot, it was more like three days. By ‘Spy Wednesday’ of this same week, tradition and scripture holds this to be the day that the traitor among the Apostles, even after witnessing Jesus’ “signs” (as John’s Gospel calls them) and wonders (read: “miracles”) and personally experiencing His teachings, actions, and love chose to strike a deal with the Pharisees; that is, Judas traded his friendship and fidelity to the Lord for a mere thirty silver pieces.

Holy Thursday plunges us deep into the ‘Paschal Mystery’ (the ‘Easter Triduum’, as it’s known) that includes the passion, death, and Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The human emotions consistent with Holy Thursday are as mixed a bag in one day and evening as the whole week is a rollercoaster.

Imagine having the knowledge that someone you loved has betrayed you while you welcome him as a friend to dinner. It’s so easy for us to lose sight of the nearly incomprehensible, but ever so genuine reality that the same Jesus who embraced, freely, our human condition is also wholly God as He is wholly human. That said, Jesus had that divine knowledge of Judas’ betrayal. At The Last Supper, he even predicts it! Jesus, not wanting to expose him to the shame and scorn of the rest of the ‘inner circle’ simply says, “One of you will betray me.”

Well, that must’ve made for an awkward remainder of the meal for everyone except Jesus who was still the only One who knew who it was. “The one who dips his piece into the dish with me.” The irony there? All of the Apostles did that, including Judas, but Jesus already knew what had been done the day before and what would come to transpire later that evening and into the early morning.

So, let’s ’zoom out’ for a moment and think about that “weight.” Jesus knew long before Holy Thursday that He was born to die— as are we all, but that His mission was uniquely different and unrepeatable. He would die once only to rise and live forever, and in so doing, He would restore the utterly severed and broken relationship between God and humanity.

Already bearing “the weight of the world” (its past, present, and future sins) on Himself, Jesus becomes aware that someone He has literally poured Himself emotionally and spiritually into for the last three years, nearly constantly as a close and trusted friend, has chosen to forfeit his friendship (and eventually his life — speaking here of Judas). What must that have felt like? Who among us, mere human beings, could hold such dignity and composure to have that knowledge and still welcome our betrayer to dinner with us?

I’ll be the first to admit that though I’d like to think I could handle it, I wouldn’t be able to. I would either not even welcome him to the dinner, publicly call him out, or, maybe even begin plotting my means of making him live to regret it. But, I digress.

As late evening gives way to early morning, Jesus has been arrested and sentenced to death by public crucifixion on the Friday we call “good.” That must be strange to those who doubt or who do not share our faith. Why do we Christians refer to the day on which the One that should be our whole life and our greatest love was murdered, and in a most brutal way, as “good”?

Of course, we know only because we have the benefit of hindsight which is always 20/20, as it’s said. We know Jesus’ death was not the end of the mystery. We also know that by His obedient death, He forever vanquished sin and eternal death and subjected the evil one to what is, for him and those who align themselves with him, the merciless domination of the Cross.

This is why we call the Friday of Holy Week “good”. It’s not as simple as far too many wish to make it. It isn’t simply because the good man, Jesus, did good things in His life, and died a good death to give us a good life. While all that is, unquestionably, true, it’s far deeper, more intricate, more profound, and more amazing than that. Were it not for the willing death of that One, supremely Good God-Man, what purpose would there be to our lives— in its various joys and sufferings?

Remember, we are only capable of loving because Christ loved us first. He showed us, on the Cross, not only what true and perfect love looks like (being unconditional to the point of a willingness to die for the good of the other), but also what it costs. The Cross, is not, then, simply a symbol. It is a price tag. True love, which as nearly all of us would be likely to agree is the only thing that makes life worth living, has a price. It cost us God’s very Self; His very Life.

What do we have to say for ourselves? Because of our sins, God in the Flesh had to suffer unlike any other and die.

Allow me to be more forthright with my question: How does it feel knowing that we, God’s most beloved creation, when we had the chance and the embrace of the only One who ever has or ever will love us perfectly, chose to murder our very creator?

Contemplate the profundity and the depth of that question.

I might contend that, when faced with that question, we all — every single last one of us — ought to be reduced to stunned silence.

… 

How does one even attempt to answer that?

What good is our most contrite and visceral, “I’m sorry, Lord” against the fact that whether we say so or not, mean it or not, Christ defeated death and sin by death itself?

We often hear of the expression “to flip the script”, indicating that a reversal of dramatic circumstances has taken place. That’s precisely what God incarnate in His Son and very Self, Jesus, did on Good Friday.

So, once again? Where, in our human condition, does that leave us? How does that sit with us?

When, because of our sins, Jesus exhaled His last gasping breath on the Cross, all of hell shrieked in utter terror. Though now dead in the flesh, the evil one looked on and saw only that he had won a battle, but that he had forever lost the total war.

Once again and never enough… Silence.

Sorrow, grief, dejection, depression, anguish— certainly, all of that, but what answer do we give for our role in the events of Good Friday?

Silence.

The silence left where the voice of one we dearly loved taken from us used to be becomes deafening and makes us numb and still.

We follow that numbness and that stillness— almost a hesitancy or reluctance to even move— into the mystery that is Holy Saturday.

“There in the grave, His body lay, Light of the World - by darkness - slain.”

Cold and entombed lies the body of the God-Man.

Yet, there is this unmistakable and inexplicable stirring mysterious nature to the silent, mournful stillness of Holy Saturday. No one knows exactly what to do now or how to even react.

In that rock-hewn tomb, hidden and locked away, “the flesh” was more than weak, but truly lifeless. However, the Spirit was surely willing.

The hidden beauty and mystery of Holy Saturday rests in what only the known tradition of Christendom gives us, namely, the knowledge that while to our perceptible senses, yes, Jesus was dead, He, as fully God continued to reign on. And so He did and does.

On Holy Saturday, the tradition of the Church holds that Jesus “descended into hell”, but not for the reason most people go there. Jesus, fully God yet fully human was indeed dead in body but “alive and kicking” in Spirit. While the world, in its somber stillness, may keep watchful mourning over Christ’s death, Jesus, taking no rest, goes in Spirit to continue His “rescue mission”.

Into the very depths of hell He barged in Spirit, to harrow it. Armed with the cruel instrument that brought Him to His earthly death, now turned into a weaponized “battering ram” of victory and triumph, Jesus broke through the gates of the underworld and brought home, at last to Heaven with Him, those who had “gone before Him marked with the sign of faith” in His Father.

Our infamously disobedient first parents, Adam and Eve, the Lord Himself did not forget, forsake, nor distain. His death redeemed even them. “Come forth towards me for I am the Light of the World”, said the Lord into hell’s abysmal darkness, “and I will give you not only my Light but Life once more and never again to be lost! For I have defeated death!”

One by one, those who had faith in God before He became incarnate, stepped forward at Christ’s command. Jesus literally ordered the prisoners of hell to be freed at once and yet, because by His perfect love— a love even to death and beyond, the evil one who held them captive was given no choice but to obey such an order for Christ had rendered him prisoner in his own realm.

Each soul that stepped forth was given a new title as they, one by one, grasped Christ’s hand who pulled them up at the gates of hell.

Saint Adam, Saint Eve, Saint Abraham, Saint Sarah, Saint Issac, Saint Jacob, Saint Moses, Saint Aaron, Saint David… and the list goes on.

We aren’t used to hearing these righteous biblical figures addressed as Saints but because of Christ’s redeeming love in death, that is what they were elevated to: the Saints of the Old Testament.

All of them, ransomed from hell by Christ Himself in victory, but ever at the price of His blood and earthly life outpoured.

The mission, at this point, has all but been accomplished.

Meanwhile, the lifeless body of Jesus there remains…

Until…

Somewhere, unknown in time to any of us on this side of eternity save the fact that it must’ve been the wee morning hours of Sunday (when the world was still cold and dark), the One who once called Himself the “Light of the World” suddenly is exalted by God the Father and by His own power.

The lifeless body of Christ does not simply “reanimate” as did Saint Lazarus (remaining subject to another death).

Christ, the exalted King, took a breath and in what must have been a dazzling instantaneous light greater than the sum total of all nuclear power and creation itself combined, had His very Spirit surge back into His body.

His perfect love transformed His body into a glorious new one, while still bearing the marks of His death. “Then bursting forth, in glorious day, up from the grave He rose again!”

Daylight slowly dawns on Sunday morning as what was likely a sleepless night of agonizing grief and pain where the silence and stillness almost seemed to be the loudest sounds.

To the tomb we go with Saint Mary (likely Magdalene and possibly “the other Saint Mary” [of Bethany] and maybe even one more), and the emotions shift yet again, but this time— briefly, from utter heartbroken sadness and grief to shock and surprise.

The giant boulder which sealed the tomb of Jesus was not in its place. The Roman seal placed on it had been breached! Ever so slowly, as Saint Mary approaches the tomb, she finds it empty and assumes, like we so often do, that an already awful situation just became worse and that the body of our Lord, our Love, and our Life has been stolen and taken to an unknown place, if not disposed of entirely— gone forever.

“Why do you seek the living among the dead?”

 “You seek Jesus of Nazareth, the Crucified. He is not here, but has been raised!”

“Go and tell my loved ones that I shall see them again in Galilee”

We know these words well (or we should, at any rate). These are the words spoken by a combination of the angel assigned to Jesus’ vacant tomb and Jesus Himself.

Utter and complete wonder and awe; resplendent joy so suddenly from out of sorrow.

“Oh death, where is thy sting? Oh hell, where is your victory?”

Sunday of Holy Week is when we commemorate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ— quite literally, “the greatest comeback of all time”, to use a popular sports metaphor.

Holy Week reaches its climax in joy exactly one week from where we also began in joy on Palm Sunday…

But, talk about a true “rollercoaster of emotions”— all this in one week.

I think, if only those who do not believe with us or who do not believe at all would give themselves over to the mysteries of Holy Week, choosing to embrace how closely it mirrors our own human condition in and throughout this life, they might find a fulfillment to what is perhaps (still unknown to them) their greatest longing; their greatest love.

Oh, what a difference a day makes!

[Nota Bene: While, to many, this might read like a fantastical tale— a first-class “happy ending story”, it should be noted that this is the Catholic-Christian faith. This is the unvarnished Truth of Christianity. This is a reality. Blessed are we who are proud to profess it, uphold it, defend it, and love it. For the record, at least for this spirituality scholar, it is not merely the stuff of intellectual investigation and scrutiny— yes, it is all of those things, but yes, I am totally personally invested in, convinced of, and convicted by this profound mystery. What I have detailed here is, obviously not a scholarly treatment— and it was never meant to be. This is a meaningful and intentional meditation— this is an answer to everyone who wonders why I do what I do and why I chose the path of a career and journey that I have. It is because, having encountered this miraculous mystery, there can be no other way.]