Day: March 26, 2023

“The Son of man came … to give his life a ransom for many”

The Lenten Sunday Gospels may be seen to anticipate and to prepare us for the intensity of the Passion in Holy Week. For then we read through all four of the Gospel accounts of the Passion, a remarkable feature of the eucharistic lectionary in the classical Books of Common Prayer. It begins on Palm Sunday with Matthew’s account of the Passion.

The Temptations of Christ on the First Sunday prepare us for the reading of the Passion from Mark’s Gospel, beginning on Monday in Holy Week, which is framed by the breaking of the alabaster box of ointment by which Christ is anointed and by the tears of Peter at his betrayal of Christ. It includes Christ’s further temptation in Gethsemane and the betrayal of both Judas and Peter who succumb to the forms of human weakness and temptation, we might say. On the Second Sunday in Lent, the Gospel story of the Canaanite Woman, a testing of the disciples and a testing of her faith in perseverance, anticipates in some sense the continuation of the Passion from Mark in Christ’s cry of dereliction in the depth of the Passion, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me,” but which nonetheless leads to the faith profession of the Centurion that “truly this man was the Son of God.” As the woman said, “Truth, Lord, yet the little dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.”

The Gospel for the Third Sunday of Christ’s casting out a devil only to be accused of being demonic himself anticipates the beginning of the Passion according to St. Luke on Holy Wednesday with all of its intensity not only in the picture of Christ’s agony in Gethsemane but also in his remark to Peter about the temptations of Satan in Peter’s betrayal and, even more, his look of compassion that brings Peter to the tears in repentance in recalling Christ’s words to him. A powerful story powerfully told. The story of the miraculous feeding in the wilderness last Sunday, set in the context of the Passover, anticipates the beginning of the Triduum Sacrum on Maundy Thursday which explicitly connects the last supper to the Passion of Christ. The continuation of Luke’s Passion presents us with three of the seven last words of Christ from the Cross, especially the last word: “Father into thy hands, I commend my spirit.” He who carries himself in his own hands in the institution of the eucharist commends himself and our humanity into the hands of the Father.

Today’s readings on Passion Sunday anticipate Good Friday with its emphasis on the theology of the atonement. Throughout Holy Week in the Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer we read the Passion according to St. John in all of its fullness. The Sunday evening Office readings in Lent immerse us in the Passion according to St. Mark and St. Luke (Year I and Year II respectively). In every way, Lent and Holy Week concentrate our attention on the Passion of Christ and the nature and meaning of our participation in that Passion. It is about human redemption understood in terms of the theology of the atonement, our being made at one with God. But that doesn’t mean that God becomes less or other than God or that we become less or other than human.

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