Psallam​​ TIBI​

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TEMPUS VISITATIONIS TUAE

 

THE TIME OF YOUR VISITATION is here, and the priest and victim has made himself ready for sacrifice. But do we truly apprehend what is about to take place in these most sacred of days? Holy Week and the Paschal Triduum may be seen from the varied perspectives of the different actors in the story about to unfold: the disciples; the crowds; the elders of the Jews; the Roman occupiers; but it is only through Christ’s eyes that we see beyond the historical reality of these events and open up the eternality of God’s love, which in these days is poured out in the Blood of the Eternal Word made Flesh, for a universal offer of salvation that transcends time and space – the Cross of Christ, that tower to the heavens which man could never build, unifying people of every tribe, tongue, and nation throughout time into the one People of God standing before the throne of the Lamb.

 

Christ looked over Jerusalem, the city itself the great altar of God on earth, and he saw, there, his sacrifice in the very presence of his Father in the New Jerusalem, its glory illuminating a world shrouded by sin and offering passage into the very heart of God. He saw and he wept; his tears not for the suffering of the Cross but for the obstinacy of man, who, given heaven, would continue to cling to the earth and, wallowing in their sin, tear it apart in violence against God and each other. The carnage of Jerusalem razed is what the Redeemer saw, and in it the horrific vision of generation after generation of man refusing the gift of salvation so freely offered by the Cross of Christ.

 

As Holy Week begins, let us pause to look at our lives through the tears of Christ. All that he is about to endure for the sake of his love for the Father, is in order to bequeath us new life in him, paid for in submission to the brutality of every man’s sin. There is no human scale capable of measuring the enormity of the sacrifice God demands and himself provides, so that we need not. Would we spurn the suffering of Christ as insufficient to move our own eyes to tears? Will we tell him that his Passion is too insignificant to touch our lives in a way that changes them forever? Shall we choose to turn the other way and refuse to follow our Lord on the Way of the Cross as he has commanded? Does he weep for us today, because having received life we have discarded it, preferring death?

 

The time of our salvation is upon us, and the enemy surrounds us, seeking to destroy, stone by stone, all that Christ has built up in us – the altar of our hearts on which we offer ourselves with Christ’s perfect oblation. May we recognise this time of our visitation and through the tears of Christ see all that threatens to draw us away from him into the pit. Let us not cling to the burning ruins of Jerusalem in her desolation, but seek the Heavenly Jerusalem by walking with Christ to the altar of God and cleaving to his Cross. There, where time and eternity meet in the death and resurrection of the Incarnate Word, we find the path we must walk to eternal life. It is a path of self-denial, of sacrifice, of suffering, which runs contrary to every instinct of our fallen senses. It challenges us to live no longer for the world, for ourselves, but to live in the hope of seeing the glory of God. It is a life of difficult choices, preferring always God in every thought, word, and deed; and of knowing that we will fail but that the journey must go on, that despair must never trump hope, and that divine mercy abounds for those who, again and again, choose life, no matter how many times they fall into the shadows of death.

 

Weep not, then, for us, Good Lord, for we desire your Cross as our own. We will not disdain your gift nor scoff at your suffering, but join you in our life’s walk to Calvary; there to offer ourselves for your work of the salvation of souls, as you, there, have already offered yourself for our salvation, sic me Deus adiuvet.

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