Contemplating the Passion

I just read a quote by Dr. Laurence Stookey, of Wesley Theological Seminary. The quote reads: “That the very Anointed One of God should die and rise on behalf of us who willfully cried ‘Crucify!’ is a thing at which we must marvel slowly, not something we glance at for an instant.

This is something St. Ignatius understood quite well. The third week of the Spiritual Exercises is devoted to contemplating the passion of Christ. Not a momentary glance, but a long, slow contemplation over a number of days. Ignatius says that during the third week of the Exercises,

I should make evern greater effort to labor with Jesus through all his pain, his struggle, his suffering, or what he was willing to suffer. At the time of the Passion, I should pay special attention to how the divinity hides itself so that Jesus seems so utterly human and helpless. I should make every effort to get inside the Passion, not just staying with external sufferings, but entering into the loneliness, the interior pain of rejection and feeling hated, all the anguish within Jesus. To realize that Jesus loves me so much that he willingly suffers everything for my rejections and my sins makes me ask: What response ought I make?

Ignatius’ instructions as good ones to take to heart as we begin Holy Week. Our reading during today’s Mass of the Passion from Mark’s Gospel is a good beginning to spending this week engaged in contemplation of Jesus’ passion, praying for the grace (to use again Ignatius’ formulation in a contemporary translation by David Fleming, S.J.) “of being able to feel sorrow for Jesus in sorrow, to be anguished with Jesus’ anguish, and even to experience tears, and deep grief because of all the afflictions which Jesus endures for me.”

Have a blessed Holy Week.