When we celebrate holy week, especially the Easter Triduum, we ask ourselves: What do we celebrate, why, and what for?
We live in a world that brags about power and beauty, in a place where mankind is immersed in a spectacle, simulating a gladiator competition, to see who is the strongest. Ours is an earthly kingdom in which money rules, where we lose the value of the human being because it is not valued for what it is but for what one economically makes. Ours is a kingdom where the weak and the immigrants are persecuted, used and humiliated.
What a sad reality where the one with the kingdom of power and money succeeds in removing the beauty of a human being’s dignity.
When Jesus, accepting our nature, descended from heaven to us, he found that the world back then had the same conditions that we have now: a kingdom that enslaves, persecutes, fights for power and has contempt for the human being’s dignity.
Not now or before did Jesus avoid that reality. He accepts it and makes it part of the human history, not to indulge or to please it, but to redeem it and save it.
But to save it with a plan. Which plan? With love, mercy and service, Jesus shows us that there is a different and possible option that does not destroy but creates; does not despise but values; does not divide but brings us together; does not hate but loves; does not condemn but saves. This option does not separate us from our history. On the contrary. By being children of Jesus, The Love, it brings us closer.
We recognize the service in the washing of the feet, the generous delivery in the Eucharist, the mystery of the love and food for the soul for all of those with humility who recognize in their soul the hunger and thirst of the Love.
In the crucifixion of our Lord, we recognize the destructive power of sin. But, how can we recognize sin if even today there are many followers who do not accept their condition as sinners and do not feel the need for the medicine of the love? Joining Jesus on the cross!
The cross is the medicine that destroys the power of the devil. It’s the chemotherapy that, with no side effects, eradicates the cancer of power, selfishness, envy and greed, to give us back the beauty of our dignity with which we were created in the image of God - the image of love.
This is what we celebrate on Easter Sunday: the triumph of life over death, love over sin, liberty over slavery.
If we want to celebrate this holy time, to receive its fruits, and not be mere spectators of this life event, we must first review our own history and recognize in it that many of the problems of our world and of our society are a reflection of our own ravages and sins.
In order to know and understand our own history and reality, we must have a humble heart and get rid of that state of denial in which we have been taught or placed ourselves and with courage recognize our condition as sinners. We will open our hearts to be washed by the love of Jesus – the medicine of his love in the cross.
This way we will joyfully live the celebration of the Eucharist. We will celebrate, in our own history, the history of salvation, the joy of the resurrection, the transition from death to life, and from sin to love. We’ll celebrate the gift of Jesus by making him part of our life; we will celebrate the gift of our own life and the joy of being part of this plan of mercy and salvation of Jesus.
Therefore, holy week and the Easter Triduum turn out to be a call to conversion and holiness.