Reflection for Holy Week

The entry of Jesus the Messiah into Jerusalem today, is accompanied by much noise and fanfare. The people shout their praise for Christ at the top of their voices. Cloaks and branches line the pavement for Jesus as a mark of respect for him. All the stops were pulled out for the king’s arrival in Jerusalem. Christ certainly went up to the Holy City in style! But how short-lived this welcome would be! How lukewarm and fickle the crowds really turned out to be, in the end. Praise from a crowd is never to be trusted. It almost always turns sour. Today’s celebrities are proof of that. Many only realise this painful truth when its too late, when the roller-coaster of fame and noteriety has dragged them into the depths of loneliness and isolation.

The Gospel accounts of Holy Week draw each of us into the dramatic events of Christ’s suffering, death and resurrection. Much of what happens this week rings as a cacaphony of noise in our ears. Shouts of praise turn to shouts of derision and insult. The King hailed in shouts of ecstatic welcome is stripped of all dignity amid roars of condemnation. The city is ablaze with rage as its people cry out for vengence for the Son of God. The real drama of Holy Week is not a drama of noise at all. It’s a drama of silence; the silence of the Son of God. The noise of the crowds and the noise within each of us, often leaves no room for silence. But God speaks dramatically through Jesus’ silence. His silence is a silence that carries within it no judgment. His silence takes our encounter with God’s love beyond words.

As we enter into Holy Week today, let us enter into its drama in a different way this year. Let us make a journey away from all the noise, into silence with Christ, who carries us with him through the darkness and into the light of God’s love.