WERE YOU THERE (RESPONSE)

Some thoughts on Holy Week from my oldest friend:

"It has only been within the last 5 years or so that I have really started to feel a connection to the Easter season, and I think I have finally pinpointed why. In the last 5 years, I have begun to identify with Jesus as a human being and not as a divine being. I am not denying the divinity of Christ, but I feel no connection there. It is with the person of Jesus that I feel connected. Somehow, my mind had sanitized the Crucifixion - made it just another step along the way, because really, in my mind, the physicality of the Crucifixion was just an inconvenience to Christ - a blip to get to where he needed to go... like filling up the gas tank.

But in recent years, my faith has changed, altered in many ways, and I see the Crucifixion in a whole new way. While the Roman Catholic Church kicks and screams and shakes it's fist at the audacity of thinking "Maybe Jesus was a man, who fell in love, got married, possibly had children". These are the concepts that have renewed my relationship with Jesus, and made him and his teachings more tangible to me. I can identify with that. Thus, my relationship to Easter has altered drastically - this man, was tortured and killed - and he knew it would happen, and he didn't run - knowing full well that his family would suffer and grieve and be devastated. And his death (and this is true whether you believe in the Resurrection or not) changed the ENTIRE WORLD forever.

So Easter has become for me, a time to reflect on the sacrifice of this man, and on the grief his family must have felt. And a time to meditate on the absolute hope, faith, and, yes, joy that I
find in that suffering, because without it, I would have no hope, faith, and joy. Because of his suffering, I can bear my own... and sometimes, it causes me to tremble with gratitude and awe."