Holy Week
Then Jesus entered Jerusalem, and went into the temple.
—Mark 11:11
—Mark 11:11
All around the world, many Christians observe Palm Sunday, the day that commemorates Jesus’ triumphal entry into the holy city. Riding on a donkey, he was greeted by ecstatic crowds who waved palm branches in celebration. In a matter of days, shouts of victory gave way to betrayals. With dizzying rapidity Jesus went from being celebrated to being crucified. Palm Sunday is the first day of Holy Week, a week in which Christian tradition marks as the last week of Jesus’ earthly life. It is a week in which we retell and remember a biblical account fraught with violence and tension, political intrigue, and incredible cruelty.
Holy Week invites us to know the narrative of these final days experientially. It is a week marked by the darkest shadows, the insanity of political machination, the tenderness of a
communal meal and the way of the cross. It is also a week filled with hope, that culminates in the mystery of an empty tomb. It is a week in which we know anew that God always, and
mysteriously brings forth life out of death.
By Easter morning if you have walked through the events portrayed by Holy Week, you will have intimations of hope—real hope. This hope springs from the valley of the shadow of death from the vast gap where we cannot bring forth anything new of our own power and volition. The hope is known in the frontier of suffering and death, where we least expect it.
Enter Holy Week, enter the story. Listen with your
deepest self as the events of the week unfold.
