What was it like, Jesus, to know where it all was headed but not yet know the outcome? To carry within you the certainty of betrayal, denial, and forsakenness? To move forward in those final hours knowing the Romans would put you to death? Look now, in your boundless compassion, on all those whose hearts are torn with anguish, those who suffer alone, those unjustly condemned, those betrayed, and those with no reasonable hope. Be their companion, their succor, their secret strength. Deliver us all from our acts and intentions of betrayal, denial, and abandonment. Der vogorma. Gospodi, pomiluj, Kyrie, eleison. Lord, have mercy.
Aus Liebe will
Aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben,
Von einer Sünde weiß er nichts.
Daß das ewige Verderben
Und die Strafe des Gerichts
Nicht auf meiner Seele bliebe.
For love,
For love my Savior is now dying,
Of sin and guilt He knows not.
So eternal desolation
And the sinner's righteous doom
Shall not rest upon my spirit.
--the BB
8 comments:
Gorgeous. Thanks, Paul.
It's all about daring to take the big risk.
I won't attend Maudy Thursday service tonight but I attended a Funeral Mass (open eucharist -- don't tell Benedict) for a really good guy and probably a saint. Joe was an RC Deacon and as a very honorable man stuck with the church on the basis of his vows although he disagreed with it on almost all the "contemporary issues". I learned from him how that could make sense. He was someone who made the concept of a community of faith come alive. I doubt he needs praying for, but pray for his wife Barbara and his kids. Be sure that he would have reached out with love to you all.
May Deacon Joe rest in peace and rise in glory. May Barbara and the children and all who love him find comfort.
I am taking a sabbatical from church this Triduum and enjoying it immensely. (When Holy Week junkies go bad....)
My goodness! I read about people giving up church for Lent and then for Holy Week. What will become of the church of all the good people stay away?
Deacon Joe sounds like a saint who is already with God. Prayers for all who love him.
I remember memorizing the injunction in Hebrews: "Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together, as is the manner of some."
Quand même.... I need a break from the ecclesial and I am taking it. I think decades of crap have taken a cumulative toll and my heart needs to be away from a context that has so many painful overtones.
This does not mean I am not keeping the observance but I do it happily in solitude.
I'm not chastising you, Paul, just teasing a bit.
The church structures are dying, but something new and better will rise to new birth. We are one in Our Lord Jesus Christ who will never leave us nor forsake us.
I knew you were teasing me, Mimi. My response was a "sharing out loud" with friends.
And you are spot on. I have long believed we were in the midst of a change as great as or greater than the Reformation (I am inclined to vote for greater) and in the middle of it one cannot see where things will end up. In the meantime it is confusion, messy, and painful. We are slowly moving from modernism to post-modernism, the patriarchy is finally dying (but not without a protracted fight demonstrating all the ferocity of a cornered animal), and we must come to grips with living in a multi-cultural and multi-religious world.
These days I am both tired and impatient.
God, however, is always present and our life is caught up in the divine life of the Trinity. So I do not despair. I do retreat now and again.
Joe was (and I belive is) someone who would have healed feelings of being tired and impatient. May he do so for you. He not only fed the hungry at our local soup kitchen but also brought the homeless home to live with him and Barbara. God is so good to let me know magic/saintly people like him.
Thanks be to God.
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