Fr. Frank Majka, SJ – The Bridge

My Part in the Passion

Holy Week begins with the reading of the Passion narrative on Palm Sunday, when people in the church take different parts, such as the narrator, Christ, and the crowd.

If we use that taking of parts as a template for the whole of Holy Week, we might ask ourselves what specific part we would take.

We could choose from Jesus, Peter, the apostles, Pilate, the Roman soldiers, Simon who helped carry the cross, Nicodemus, the women who stayed loyal to Jesus, or the religious leaders who rejected him. Since I am a part of the “clerical caste” of the Catholic church, maybe I should think about that last group and what I can learn by reflecting on them.

The religious leadership of Jesus’ day was afraid of Jesus and what his message would demand of them, for they’d find themselves in unfamiliar waters when it came to understanding God, themselves, and others. Their intellectual and religious skills, acquired over years of study and practice, would have to change if being holy meant going beyond strict observance of the Law and Jewish ritual. The sad truth is that Jesus threatened those religious leaders who, ironically, should have been the first to accept him.

Reflecting on them leads me to ask myself if there’s anything in the gospel that makes me nervous or threatens me, like it did the clerical caste of Jesus’ day — things that call into question my understanding of what holiness means. Could my way of being a publicly religious person somehow keep me from real faith in Christ as it did those men so long ago? That’s what I will be thinking about this Holy Week.