Any Christian will agree with the proposition: Jesus died for our sins. Things get a bit more complicated if we add: so that we can learn to die to ourselves. And yet, the first proposition gets us nowhere – nowhere at all – without the second. The death of Our Lord is not like a click on your computer that fixes all the problems. God is not a free vending machine that you can approach and expect to get whatever you want without putting in any effort. Unfortunately many people approach God that way, and that’s why they remain empty and hungry.
The truth of the matter is that every baptised Christian, to reference St Paul, has put on Christ, has been buried into His death. The clear and simple meaning of such powerful expressions is that a true Christian must live a dead life. Yes, we must live a dead life. We must be dead to the world, to its pleasures, to its ambitions, if we want to be alive in Christ.
The Sacred Triduum we celebrate these days is there to remind us of this. It is there so that we can follow our Blessed Saviour in the details of His sacrificial death, and thus learn to follow in His footsteps, to carry our Cross behind Him, to lose our life so that we may find it, to die with Him so that we can rise with Him.
Tragically, many Christians try to have it both ways. They want to be faithful to Christ and to the world at the same time. The best of them want their fidelity to Christ to keep them out of mortal sin, although this doesn’t always work. And Christ is saddened at their repeated falls.
And yet, it doesn’t have to be that way. Following Christ is not nearly as painful as was His passion. It involves spending time in prayer with Him each day. It includes knowing how to renounce our passions and embrace things that our fallen nature finds repugnant, such as giving up things that we like, practicing some fasting and almsgiving. These simple gestures are the practical means by which we are buried in death with Christ Our Lord, and if we are so buried, we know that we will rise with Him in glory
Such, my dear Friends, is the true message of Holy Week and Easter. Death leads to life, suffering leads to pleasure, humiliation leads to glory. There is no other way. May we all have the grace to take that path.
If this is a tough pill to swallow, let us turn to Mother Mary. At the foot of the cross she learned this lesson better than anyone, and she stood there for three long hours. That is why she is the first to receive the Easter apparition of her glorified Son. Let’s be generous this Holy Week, and our Easter joy will be true and lasting.