Reflections from the Rector
Dear Friends
As we approach Palm Sunday this week and Good Friday next week we can’t really evade the notion of suffering. It is real, it is evident, it has been a part of the human story for such a long time.
Let us be perfectly clear about the suffering and death of Jesus. He was no masochist. He didn’t look for suffering but it nevertheless came his way. He did things differently. He aroused suspicion. He spoke of God as his Father. He healed on the Sabbath. He reinterpreted the Mosaic tradition. He upset religious authorities. He stood for the truth. He seemingly blasphemed. He aroused jealousy.
Forces conspired against him, even groups normally opposed to one another bandied together to bring about his demise. In the garden in Gethsemane on the evening of his arrest he prays to his Father, ‘Take this cup away from me, but let it be as you, not I would have it.’ Impending suffering hurt Jesus just as it does you and me.
As Christians, we believe that Jesus’ death reconciled us with God, brought us back into favour with God, opened the gates of heaven to followers and ushered us into a new relationship with God. As we immerse ourselves in this mystery we don’t simply remember a past event but we, too, in our time, are caught up in the mystery of death and resurrection.
St Paul can write to the Romans, ‘when we were baptised we went into the tomb with him and joined him in death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glory, we too might live a new life.’ The season of Lent has invited us to fast, to pray, to show mercy, ‘to go into the tomb with him’ and live anew.
Easy enough words to write but hard to put into practice. Jesus, living by the truth cost him his life. But this is what we are called to do. We stand up for the bullied one, we recognise the dignity of each person as made in the image and likeness of God, we empower others not enslave them, we forgive them not resent them, we live generously, not selfishly, we stand up as believers and not recoil from faith. Death and resurrection are not simply past events but present realities.
May the great feasts we celebrate help us to ponder the meaning they contain.
Fr Peter Rankin, SDB - Rector
A Catholic School in the Salesian Tradition
