Just the thought of the power of this week in the life and culture of the Church stills me for a moment. The solemn joy of the sufferings of Christ made perfect by His Resurrection overwhelms me and leaves me wordless. That's why this isn't going to be a long post. I'm not going to even try to find the language to express how deeply changed I am because this week, these earth-altering events, happened over two thousand years ago.
This year I've participated in the Lenten fast for the first time in my life, and I have loved the daily opportunity to give up some fleshly desire to Jesus as a way of saying to Him that I am remembering Him and what He suffered for me. Six weeks of sacrificing something small in order to align myself--in such an infinitesimally small way--with the trials of my Lord have made the expectation of the rejoicing to come this Sunday that much fuller and dearer.
Think with me this week about the hugeness of God confining Himself to flesh, and then to death, for us. And anticipate with me the happy celebration of the truth of the Resurrection!
[from Isaiah 25]
{v. 4} "For you have been a stronghold to the poor, a stronghold to the needy in distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat....
{v. 6} On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food...
{v. 8} He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.
{v. 9} It will be said on that day, 'Behold, this is our God, we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.'"
[from Isaiah 53]
{v. 11} "Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities."
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