COVID-19 and Holy Monday

Before I get started, I’m doing OK and health wise I feel fine. As a family we are all well and enjoying spending a little more time together. We are eating more meals and watching more movies together and having fun doing that.
But I’ve also been feeling kind of low and stressed about many of the ramifications of this COVID-19 thing.
I know I am definitely not alone in this, but I’m kinda down.
And though I don’t want to be, nor do I want to admit this, I’m also kinda scared. I came to grips with my own mortality a long time ago. But I did always envision a more romantic way of dying than suffocating while being stuck in a hospital in ICU with a tube down my throat on a ventilator with family not able to come and see me.
I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this either…
But today I was reminded yet again of the road Jesus took to the cross during ‘Holy Week’.
It was hard for Him.
Brutally hard.
And I suspect scary.
And depressing.
He felt rejected. He asked God why He had forsaken Him.
I get that.
I feel rejected and forgotten by God more than usual these days.
I guess this is the way of the cross.
It is brutal.
Brutally painful.
Brutally humiliating.
Brutally lonely.
Brutally unwanted.
Brutally unchosen.
I guess I get that too.
And I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this either.
I guess we’re all ‘getting’ Holy Week this year in a very powerful and unprecedented way.

Prayer
(Based on the Holy Monday gospel reading from John 12: 1-12)
Holy One,
When reading this passage It seems that we are to decide if we are more like Mary Magdalene or Judas.
Mary washed your feet with very expensive perfume.
Judas got angry at her for doing that and then later betrayed you for a few bucks.
My sense in reading this passage is that I am a lot like both of these characters. I hope I am like Mary most of the time but I fear, if I had to, that I would betray you in order to save my own skin.
I hope I am wrong about that.
Help me to be wrong about that.
I pray during this COVID-19 crisis, which everybody on the planet is faced with, that you draw us all closer to being much more like Mary than like Judas.
Help each of us to understand Holy Week in a new and life-giving way because of this crazy virus.
Amen

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