Dr. Agnes Thomas

“Holy Week is a privileged time when we are called to draw near to Jesus: friendship with him is shown in times of difficulty.” – Pope Francis
The holy week continues to be my favourite week after all these years. As we prepare for another Holy Week and Easter celebration, two questions guide me in reflection: how do we turn our anguish and pain into joy and love, and how do we turn bitterness into forgiveness? From my experience and observation of people who have gone through deep suffering and pain, I see the answer: through reconciliation, choosing to love in the face of hate, and embracing suffering with gratitude. Through this, we can understand the meaning of the resurrection.
As a child, Maundy Thursday meant family, relatives, and neighbours gathering to break bread in the late hours of the night in memory of the Passover meal. Yes, the carefully prepared savouries, bread, and milk were central, but what never failed to amaze me each year was the experience of reconciliation that was so present during those evening hours. Family members who didn’t speak to each other held out their hands to receive the bread with grace and chatted with one another. Everyone participated willingly, letting go of the issues that kept them separate was resolved, and nobody talked about it afterward. As a child, that created a deep impression on me about the importance of reconciliation and the simplest form of it revealed in a stretched-out palm of a hand, receiving and breaking bread together. This little yearly celebration of the Maundy Thursday was of deeper meaning, and the time spent in the church on Good Friday was a continuation of the solemnity we experienced at home the night before.
I shared this little experience from my childhood because it solidified my understanding of Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection as an adult. The Passover week helps us reflect on the myriad of experiences we have in our day-to-day lives. We may experience moments of betrayal and other times of deep loneliness or experience of violence and abandonment; Jesus experienced all of that, but where the story takes a turn in how he responded to it. How are we responding and showing love to our families, siblings, neighbours, friends, and co-workers when they show hostility? How are we offering grace to the one who backstabbed us? How are we offering peace to the one who put us down? After all these centuries, Jesus’s story continues because it shows an alternative life path, a life that is of hope. The resurrection reveals the meaning of life beyond our understanding. Still, we can exemplify the same hope and new life to our families, children, and neighbours by offering peace and reaching out to the ones excluded from our midst. And by choosing to love when it is hard and by choosing/sharing hope in the face of adversity, we rise above the death of that experience.
The gift of suffering is that it deepens the soul and adds a sweet richness to life when we see and receive it as a gift. When we reflect on the suffering and death of Christ and then the resurrection, it reveals hope, deep love that is beyond our understanding, and to call to imitate that love. It is a rather simple call if we can surrender ourselves to it; the call for humility, the acceptance of our vulnerability, the triumph of living the truth, and finding joy in the midst of this every day, even when we don’t see any light. In surrender, we find peace, and we find hope and the light that is waiting. Let us continue to encourage each other to grow in that knowledge and have the serenity to embrace everyday suffering so that our paths are not treacherous but meaningful to journey home. Jesus shows us this through His life and death.
Lord, help us to find meaning in suffering; let us wait in joyful hope to be freed from the fears of suffering and death so that we may see the light. Amen