“Though I thought I had toiled in vain, and for nothing, uselessly, spent my strength, yet my reward is with the Lord, my recompense is with my God.” As we hear these words from the prophet Isaiah as we journey during Holy Week and get ready to commemorate the Triduum, we may reflect upon how often on our journey of faith, we may be following what we think is the will of God in our lives, and we may feel like we have no results to show for it. That is what the message of our secular culture is all about – success concerns results, getting things done, producing something useful, making money or accumulating material possessions, having something to show for our efforts, something tangible. In our work or in our personal lives, we are often impatient if those tangible results don’t come quickly, And if the results don’t come quickly, we can feel the need to change course in order to show that we are getting things done and that our efforts are making a difference. When I was a missionary, results were often hard to recognize, and if I had judged what I was doing by the criteria set by our secular world, I probably would have given up in a sense of failure and lack of accomplishment.
Yet, God’s ways are often very different from the ways of our world. God’s plan is to lead us to salvation, not to bring us earthly accomplishment and glory. Through the prophet Isaiah, the Lord says to his people: “I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”
As we commemorate Holy Week, as we accompany Jesus on his journey to the cross, we hear Jesus tell his disciples how this week will end for him, all a part of God’s plan of salvation for humanity. May we never forget that God’s ways are often so very radical compared to the ways of our world. As we complete our journey with Jesus during Holy Week, may we never lose sight of where we are going.
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