Do you feel stuck in the spiritual life, like something is holding you back? Did Lent fall short of bringing about deeper conversion?
Holy Week, as the culmination of Lent, seeks to resolve these dangling tensions, as we celebrate the Paschal Mystery, the new Passover initiated by Jesus. It’s about experiencing liberation, the freedom that comes from being saved from deadly forces we can’t control. It only takes death.
Just as the angel of death passed over the house of the Israelites, which had the blood of the Passover lamb spread over the lintel of the door and down its sides, so the blood of the new Passover Lamb, Jesus himself, saves us from eternal death. Instituting a new Passover implies that there has been a new Exodus as well. At the Transfiguration, Luke describes Jesus’ descent to Jerusalem to undergo his Passion and Death as his “Exodus”: “And behold, two men talked with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure (exodon), which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem” (Lk 9:30-31). His surrender to death became the source of freedom, enabling us to enter his new life.
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