Our Lady of Lourdes Church and School

As we come to the beginning of our celebration of Holy Week this year, I am reminded that this is one of those moments that somehow unites Catholic Christians the world over. There is something wonderfully intense about Palm Sunday as it prepares us for the great liturgies of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the amazing Easter Vigil. As we journey through these liturgies, we are brought into conversation with our faith and with our God in what can be, for some of us, very intense ways. The intensity is, I think, part and parcel of how real the liturgies get, from foot washing and prayer before the Blessed Sacrament  on Thursday to the brutality of the Passion narrative on Friday, all pointing us toward the great triumph of Resurrection and Life on Saturday evening Vigil. This sense of the real can be powerful, but it does get me thinking on how real the presence of God is for us in our lives.

Recently I was reading a brief article in which the author was sharing her journey in faith. She was describing how she had to let go of her childhood images of God with which we are all likely familiar… God the Father as a white-haired, kindly, grandfatherly-type figure, Jesus as the young man who was kind to everyone and who healed sick people, and the Holy Spirit as the somewhat intangible but fiery presence of God. But letting go of these images was only possible for the author as she began to reflect on some of her own life experiences in the light of all she had learned of God as she grew through her adulthood. Amy-Morris young writes:

“As I settled into parenthood, my husband, Dan, once asked me what my favorite part of being a parent was. I knew my answer at once: it was those times , at three in the morning, holding a kid who had a croupy cough in a steamy bathroom, or a barfy tummy on a pile of towels in the bed. At those times it was just my child and me alone but together in the dark, fighting whatever was hurting. It was just us. And I felt that only I could make it better, just by being there, no matter what, even if it took me forever. That experience became God for me and that was how I experienced God with me.

“As I am a mom and a grandmother, the only experience I can find as close to that intense intimacy that I feel for God is the relationship between myself and my babies or grandbabies. God enfolds me, like a mommy or daddy, nuzzling me through the flu, cuddling me close on a snowy day, or tucking me into a warm safe bed. And, just like with our babies, God sometimes has to say “no” to me, when what I think I want is actually not the best for me, or could actually hurt me. Like a parent, God sometimes just knows better, and it is up to me to trust and be patient.

“It is not easy. I imagine that I have made God suffer through many of my pointless tantrums, just to prove that I have a choice, a free will, and I won’t be told what to do. But after I have cried myself to sleep, wake up spent somehow cleaned out, and refreshed by tears, God is right there, Loving me. The feeling is always: “Shall we start again?”

To enter into the mystery of the reality of God’s love for us is not always easy for us. But the truth is that God really loves us just the way we are. God sees that we are people “in process” that we are ever becoming all that God sees in us and yearns for us in our becoming our best selves. Our learning, our struggles to evolve and to do our level best… That undoubtedly puts a smile on the face of a God who so delights in us. If this Holy Week is about anything, it is about the difficulties and challenges of the living of life, in which God continues to love and delight in us. That is indeed a wonderfully, holy, truth.