Passion Sunday

For Passiontide, I am using Raymond E. Brown's superb (and very lengthy) commentary on the Passion narratives as my spiritual reading. It never fails to strike me that scripture passages which I have read on countless occasions are never exhausted in the richness they have to offer - there is always a new dimension to see.

My good friend and co-contributor here mentioned, on his own blog, that he is reading the NT in Greek at the moment. My own Greek will win no awards, yet I am finding that a word or expression here or there can expand the entire impact of a passage. This may mean little, but just noticing the term for 'cup' ended up sending me in a meditative direction. "This is the cup of my blood..." "Take this cup away from me..."

In his brilliant comparison of the Gethesemane prayer and references in Hebrews, Raymond Brown presents a very powerful image of Jesus' prayer having been answered. He was not spared from dying, of course, but God gave him the victory over death. The temple veil was torn - a pagan centurion acknowledged the Son of God - Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father.

I realise, of course, that today I am basically saying 'the grass is green.' Yet it was unfortunate, in the past, that sermons, articles, and the like often carefully steered away from seeing Jesus as having truly been in agony in Gethesemane. It was feared that it would compromise his divinity to see him ask that the very cup of the new and everlasting covenant be taken away - and he had to be seen as knowing the future, having no doubt that the resurrection was soon to come.

I know I have some intense meditations ahead - on the High Priest who himself is the sacrifice - and on how Jesus was confronting both his own horrid suffering and the conflict with evil over which triumph was bringing about the coming of the kingdom.

If there is a major defect in Franciscan approaches, it is that, for all the general appeal of references to Jesus' earthly life, one would think that the incarnation consisted, in full, of Jesus' having been born and died. :) The listener can identify with Him as poor and suffering - but the divine Logos can get lost somewhere.