Listening to the comment of
Christ’s crucifixion, and death during Holy week, I am struck by one detail in
the story: the loyalty to the end of a handful of people, Mostly women, about
whom the Gospels tell us almost nothing else. What we do know is that Christ’s
disciples, all men ran away and left him behind, Peter denied him. Judas
betrayed him. Crowd followed him while He was preaching and each person was
expecting to get something from Him: they expected help, miracle and healing.
They expected liberation from the Roman occupation, and to put their earthly
cares in order. These people poorly misunderstood the meaning of His Teaching,
if they ever really heard it at all, of self-renunciation and love, of
wholehearted self-giving. For them Jesus is a handout, an offer for help and so
they came and followed.
Christ’s earthly glory and
human success burst into bright flame for the last time on the day of his
Triumphant entry into Jerusalem, when, in the word of the “Evangelist all the
city was stirred” (Mat.21:10) but that was only for a moment.
All of this suddenly ended.
The light went out, and after Palm Sunday came the darkness, loneliness and
inconsolable grief of Holly Week. And was not the most painful part of these
final days the betrayal by close friends and disciples to whom Christ had truly
given himself totally? We know that ever Peter, who so loudly promised to die
with Christ, wavered at the last moment and renounced, rejected and betrayed
him. And “Then” write St. Matthew: “all the disciples forsook him and fled”
26:56 but not all as it turned out. The Cross-brings on the hour of simple
human faithfulness and love. Those who in time of “success” seemed so removed,
whom we almost never meet in the pages of the Gospels, to whom Christ had given
no advance word of his resurrection, and for whom therefore everything ended
and was lost on the hight of the Cross, these were the people who proved
faithful, who remained at the Cross-in steadfast human love. The evangelist
John writes: “standing by the Cross of Christ were his mother, and his mother’s
sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene” John 19:25.
One day later after the
Sabbath… on the third day the same women came to the grave, in keeping with the
custom of that time to anoint his body with aromatic spices. And it was
precisely to them that the Risen Christ first appeared. They were the first to
hear from him that “Rejoice” which forever afterwards became the essence of
Christian strength. Christ had not revealed the Mystery of the future to these
women as he did to the twelve chosen apostles. They knew neither the Meaning of
His death nor the Mystery of His approaching victory in the resurrection. For
them the death of their Teacher and friend was simply death, the end, even
worse, it was a terrible and shameful death, a terrible and abrupt end. They
stood at the Cross only because they loved Jesus, and in loving him, suffered
with him. They did not leave his poor, tortured body, but did all that love has
always done at final separation.
Those whom Christ asked to
stay with him at the hour of his agonizing struggle, when He “began to be
greatly distressed and troubled” (Mk 14:33) dropped him, ran away and renounced
him. But those from whom he asked nothing remained faithful in their simple
human love. “Mary stood weeping outside the Tomb” (John 20:11). Down through
the centuries, love has always wept in this way, as Christ wept at the grave of
his friend Lazarus.
The love and faith fullness
of few individuals shone brightly in the midst of hopeless darkness. It calls
us to ensure that in this world love and faithfulness do not disappear or die
out. The Mysterious Joseph and Nicodemus and the women who go to the grave at
down, occupy so little space in the Gospels, precisely here, however, is where
the eternal fate of each of us is decided.
Today, we are especially in
need of recovering this love and basic human loyalty. Today these values are
discredited by harmful concepts of the person and human life prevailing in this
world. Love does not ask about theories and ideologies, but speaks to the heart
and soul, without love, without this light, our world, regardless of its
successes and accomplishments, would be a world of terror, and of Robots. It
can be said that the humanity of the human race was, and is, being preserved,
saved, by woman, preserved not by words or ideas, but by her silent, caring.
Loving presence.
“The Wine gave out”... (John
2:3), but while she is here, mother, wife, bride, there is enough wine, enough
love, enough light for everyone.
