I’ll be spending another Paschal Triduum at home this season. Perhaps I’ve gotten out of step thanks to the isolation of COVID. I can try and use that as an excuse, but it’s a weak one. I wouldn’t call how I feel right now a “crisis of faith,” but perhaps it is a crisis of identity. The last couple of years have shown me things about our society that have given me great pause. I have some more distance to travel before I can speak clearly about what it all means to me, but here on this Good Friday I have drifted into some reflection, perhaps simply as a habit of my faith.
There are messages within the events of Holy Week that transcend religion. It concerns me that these messages, which could well lead to the salvation of society as a whole, are lost on so many because the messenger has become a corrupt derelict. I ask you to forget for this moment the trappings of all religion and politics. Forget the messages shoved down our throats from leadership in every realm. Forget the arguments of dispensationalism, evangelism, atheism.
Consider only for a moment one single act of grace. It doesn’t matter who you are or from whom it comes, and it especially doesn’t matter if you, me, or any of us deserve it. I am not selling anything here. Neither am I giving anything away. Nothing in this belongs to me. This message from from this story is not something only to be understood by members of a particular cult, but should be understood by every living thing on this planet. Grace is available to everyone without exception. And grace finds it way into the world through us. The Good News is each of us has the super power to give grace to literally anyone we choose.
I submit to you this series of illustrations, and I suggest a time of reflection be spent on each, and each should, no must, be taken at equal value. The true and only path to peace on earth unfolds to us universally in the Paschal Triduum. Each and every one of us.
Letters From Nod 