One of our beliefs that Holy Week confronts, is that a good parent will always come to rescue us from a tough situation. Or that a good parent goes before us and smooths things out and paves our way, so we don’t have to encounter any suffering or pain.
This belief gets challenged in our lives when we believe God is good and loving and then we encounter pain or suffering or evil or injustice, because we believe that a good parent shouldn’t allow that, or that they should rescue us from those situations, or go ahead of us and fix those problems. So, we ask questions like: How can God be all-powerful and all good and allow me to go through this suffering?
But what if instead, we allow our belief to be challenged? What if the job of a good parent is to make their children brave and strong, rather than protect or rescue them from all suffering?
What if we allow our belief about God should or shouldn’t do, to be challenged? Because throughout the Bible and especially during Holy Week, we see God totally willing to enter into our brokenness and dysfunction – not to take it away, but to be with us in it and to redeem it. To transform the experience of our brokenness, through forgiveness, healing and Himself freely accepting suffering out of love for us, so that it becomes the very means through which we can grow more in our heavenly Father’s likeness – especially in His mercy and unconditional love.
During this week, we see Jesus going through the agony of His suffering and calling out to our heavenly Father, knowing he can still trust His Dad even in the worst moment of his life. And that’s what our heavenly Father wants for us – to be like Jesus the Son – to grow in confidence that we can trust our heavenly Dad, even in the worst moments of our life.
That’s the greatness to which we are called again, during this Holy Week. As Pope Benedict XVI said years ago: ‘The world offers you comfort but you are not made for comfort; you are made for greatness.’ We are called to become nothing less than Saints, who carry the likeness of Jesus the Son and our heavenly Father.
