We find ourselves in Holy Week, just before we start the Triduum of liturgies tomorrow with Holy Thursday. What a very different Holy Week we find ourselves in this year, as we commemorate these holy days at the end of Lent and at the beginning of the season of Easter. As we hear one of the suffering servant songs from Isaiah and as we hear about Judas and his plans to betray Jesus, I wondered: Would Jesus have connected the suffering servant song in Isaiah to what he was going through in his passion? Would he have connected all these events of his journey to the cross to his death and resurrection, and all that would mean for humanity. There was much debate and discussion about Jesus’ divinity and humanity in the Early Church. Reading the writings of the Early Church Fathers, we can see many different points of view being debated, even centuries after Christ’s death and resurrection. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 provides this statement: “Following the holy Fathers, we unanimously teach and confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, composed of rational soul and body; consubstantial with the Father as to His divinity and consubstantial with us as to His humanity; ‘like us in all things but sin.’” During Holy Week, we ponder the mystery of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection. We ponder Jesus’ fullness in divinity and fullness in humanity. I think of how in the finding of Jesus in the Temple from Luke’s Gospel which states, “(He) progressed steadily in wisdom and age and grace before God and men.”
As we ponder the mysteries of our faith in a special way, may we pray that God open our hearts and our minds to the fullness of these mysteries.
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