The Center for contemplative practice
A Lay Cistercian Looks at Spiritual Reality
LOCKED FROM THE INSIDE
Here is a different take on Holy Week.
I have had this experience only once or twice in my lifetime, both times they were frustrating. I am speaking of knocking on the door of my house but it is locked from the inside and I don’t have the key. Only one way in, you must break a window or break down a door. In my Lectio Divina (Phil 2:5) this week, I thought of this scenario from my past as it applies to the Resurrection.
Think of it. In the Garden of Eden, we were locked out by God because Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s instructions, preferring to be their own god. The results are what we know as Original Sin, dying, suffering, pain, work, being accountable for our own destiny. God has the only key. One of the most disasterous effects of this break of love and convenant with God is that we cannot enter Heaven with this mark on our souls. Compounding the problem is we cannot remove this mark by ourselves. We need someone from inside the room to open the door and let us in. In a nutshell, this is the story of our salvation, begun in Genesis and fulfilled in the New Testament convenant with the life and death of Jesus, our Savior, our Master.
It took a God to open the door from the inside. The problem with this is God the Father is the one offended by Adam and Eve and cannot open the door unless someone knocks from the other side. That person must be human, not God. So, God saw that we messed up so terribly and that it would take a miracle to untangle this Gordian knot.
Read Philippians 2:5-12. This tells of God sending His son to earth to take on our sinful nature (God’s nature is divine) and knock at the door on behalf of all humanity. The price to open the door was for Jesus to voluntarily give His life to ransom us from death and to open the doors of Heaven. In this Holy Week, we look at the extent that God loved all of us and how much Jesus would endure to allow us to be adopted sons and daughters, heirs of the kingdom that Adam and Eve has abandoned.
Today, twenty centuries later, we still approach the unapproachable face of the Father through the Son, with the grace of the Holy Spirit to help us. Holy Week is the time each year we focus on the love Christ had for us. Eucharist is the gift of Christ to the Father, giving honor and glory. We are blessed to be able to tag along in a small way and lift up our hearts and minds to God. How blessed we are because of the mercy and kindness of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To them be glory now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. Amen.
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