As we enter Holy Week

It is odd, the memories that can come upon us unaware. I well remember returning from my mother's funeral, two years ago today. I was highly tense, and thought that turning on the television might help me to unwind. Of course, the news that greeted me - the beginning of the war in Iraq - hardly tended towards that end.

As always, I am looking forward to Holy Week - and I'm sure that I shall have comments to make about the liturgical, scriptural richness. (Grinning, I shall add: I am most fortunate to have nearby churches with splendid music. Besides all of the wonderful services ahead - and the magic of sitting before the repository, for example - what starving scholar cannot be glad at the thought of all the free concerts that are built into the bargain?)

I have never been one much for discursive meditation (I am too literary - once I get started, I'm inwardly writing a novel.) Yet I often imagine how devastating Jesus' arrest and crucifixion must have been for his disciples. It certainly was no accident that the Risen Lord's first words were of forgiveness - I'm sure the memory of their own actions burnt them to the quick.

Christianity is a faith of waiting and uncertainty, and so it shall remain until the parousia (which we may not recognise when it comes...) I know that many scholars today question whether the first Christians expected Christ's return (and their glory) to be at hand, but any knowledge of human nature would make one expect that the idea of transformation soon to come would have been sustaining - and the resurrection would make it quite believable. :)

The very 'already - not yet' quality of the New Testament eschatology can make one hover between expectation and doubt. Is this all true? How did Jesus' Incarnation, in its fullness, change anything on this earth? (Mankind surely is capable of no less evil - none of the natural sufferings of this world are lessened.) Salvation history is waiting for revelation - for the Messiah - for the final coming in glory... To an unbeliever, it could seem as if Christians were always assuring themselves that glorious things had happened, then hiding behind 'but the best is yet to come.'

I know that I can speak words of doxology, meaning every word - then wonder, "is this all true?" The silence is overwhelming at times. We can catch a glimpse of divine glory, which only reminds us that we barely know God at all. Words unite us to him in prayer - and suddenly seem to mean nothing.

It is a bit of a penance for me, writing today - knowing that these thoughts are disjointed and confused. Yet I shall return to the repository image for a moment. There is something about the silence of that time of adoration that leaves me with incredible awe. I sense Jesus' hidden glory at the ugliest time of his life. On the night of his arrest, he, too, would have been dealing with waiting and uncertainty.