The associated reading for this reflection can be found in your Every Sacred Sunday Mass journal or online here.
This gospel, where Jesus gives a little spoiler wrapped up in mystery and poetry, always stops me short. I know what’s coming so I can connect the dots, but those hearing him in real time had no convenient context. Part of me wonders how they must have reacted, but more of me is just so grateful to be planted in history with the rest of the pages. I don’t have to operate off of salvific foreshadowing; I was born with the veil already torn. I think I often take that for granted. Every generation is steeped in a particular grace, and though it would have been iconic to have lived when Jesus did, something about the grace of this time and space is so well-tailored to you and me, and us to it.
Living the liturgical calendar has also always felt like an odd exercise to me. We place ourselves in historical mindsets when we know what comes next. We accompany Mary’s uncertainty in Advent and celebrate Jesus’ birth at Christmas before jumping into his public ministry. We follow his miracles and parables to Calvary and the tomb before the big crescendo of the Resurrection. Then we’re thrown back into Ordinary Time and gear up for another trip around the biblical sun.
It’s strange, sifting through the same stories each year when my surroundings and perspectives change so dramatically. Some Lents find me peaceful, others find me exhausted, and still more find me declaring, “prepare ye way for perfection,” only to face plant on my aspirations. It's the face plants, I think, that characterize me most -- when the cyclical and the novel and the human collide. And in those moments, Jesus’ words from the gospel ring the truest,“I am troubled now. Yet what should I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name.”
The world is wild, but here I stand. I’d like to ask for a golden ticket out of messy circumstance, out of my own tendency towards buffoonery, but instead I beg for the mess to somehow glorify the God who entered our mess and said “it is good.” I cling to Christ’s promise that “when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself,” and I hush that little voice telling me I’m not among the “everyone.” Because I am, and so are you. There’s a particular grace to this time and space. Sometimes wading through it is peaceful, sometimes it’s exhausting, and sometimes it feels like we spend more time getting up off the ground than moving forward. But there is a grace, knowing in the hardest of moments that the story doesn’t end with the cross or the tomb.
Hannah Kelley is finishing up her Master’s of International Policy at the University of Georgia, before interning with Holy See at the UN this summer. She loves black coffee, holiday eves, seasonal Charlie Brown movies, and brisk walks, but especially when shared with friends. Come say hi on Instagram.