12 Apr Friday

How many times I hear myself saying out loud, “I’m really busy right now” or some such phrase. No more than it is out of my mouth I regret saying it because I’m probably no more busy that anyone else. We are all busy, way too busy. In being busy, we are really expressing a certain “full-of-myself” situation. Being busy and of importance to others gives us meaning in our lives; my calendar is full, therefore, I must be important. Perhaps we dread the empty schedule, or we dread our empty lives.

This busy-ness doesn’t mean I don’t have time for you, because I still say yes to almost everything in a compulsive way. Some of yearn for that “desert” experience, that alone-with-the-alone experience of the mystics as a healing for the business of our lives.

This deep yearning, which is also a source of fear to answer to, is fulfilled in Jesus. The self-sacrificing, self-emptying characteristic and manner of being and acting on the part of Jesus runs through Palm Sunday readings and of the entire Holy Week.

As Jesus is the suffering servant, so too in some way as disciples we learn to give ourselves away. “The one who saves his life in this world will lose it, and the one who loses his life in this world will save.” This is the great mystery of the Pascha. There is no other way.