OUR struggle with the Covid-19 pandemic has made many of us forget that we have entered the Holy Week. Precisely, the suffering which many have been experiencing for more than a year now has made us ask whether penance and penitence are still needed these days?
The celebration of the mysteries of our faith, however, is not just about the compliance of ecclesiastical prescriptions, and neither is it a matter of just going through the seasons of our religious calendar. In essence, our religious observances are deeply rooted in our existential questions. Religion symbolizes our deepest longings and dreams as well as our anxieties and fears. The gap between God and man is bridged by man himself, the portal to which is the awareness of the most important question: what do all of these celebrations mean to me?
The Holy Week should not just make us enter or re-enter into the narrative of the Lord's passion, death, and resurrection. It must allow us, or even awaken us to enter and re-enter into our own. Unless we see the connection of the narratives that we have been reading to that of our lives, little shall be our appreciation of the repeated liturgies and sacraments. We can only stand in closer proximity to the divine element of our celebrations through the realization that God's reality does not reside outside our very own.
A significant element in the celebration of the Lord's passion is the cross. Described by many as the greatest symbol of Christianity and even the world's salvation itself, it actually has a very worldly meaning. But the cross is not just a religious symbol. It also captures the truth about human existence: burdensome and full of labors. The cross reminds us of our finitude and the certitude of death despite the uncertainty of all other human possibilities. The cross indeed is a scandal not just for Christians but anyone who is human. It reminds us of our weakness despite our strength.
But it is in our limitations, weaknesses, and finitude that we get to admit who we are and thus work only within the parameters of our realities. The cross reminds us not to go beyond what we are only capable of. Above all, it reminds us that though human life has its limitations and end, but, these are not obstacles to making use of the here and now in order to contribute to the betterment of others in the spirit of self-giving.
We have been repeating the celebration of the Holy Week for centuries. It is necessary however to retrieve its significance in our lives. This is imperative not just because it is an integral aspect of our culture, but because its meaning cannot be separated from our own meaning as individuals.
Many have said that the Covid-19 pandemic is our new cross. A closer look at it, nonetheless, would reveal that it is not a new burden but a reminder that we have always been carrying our burdens of poverty, sickness, and death. The world and human existence, with or without the pandemic, shall always be full of struggles. It is just that, we have forgotten, or we have opted to manicure the bare realities of life.
May our celebrations lead us to the deserts of our existence so that there we may also find the wellspring of our hope.