Fr Peter Helman

"Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?
Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow"
Lamentations 1:12

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Dear friend,

We made a beautiful beginning of Holy Week yesterday with our observance of the Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday. Within the course of a single liturgy, we marked the dramatic turn from the scene of Jesus’ triumphal entry into the gates of Jerusalem to the mob calling for him to be killed.

Today is Monday of Holy Week. The sung Passion Gospel is still in our ears. We wake to the memory of the foment and fear of yesterday. With an understanding of the events of Palm Sunday, and with the view we have of the Triduum, of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Great Vigil, we see what is to come and step toward it. And for the moment, we’re left with the disciples at the beginning of the end.

I believe the disciples know Jesus is going to die the way he does. He stirs up the crowd, and Rome fears foment. Jesus told them the way it would be, that he would be handed over to suffering and death. Peter and the others protest, make solemn vows never to deny Jesus. They say they will forfeit their lives for him if it comes to it. While they speak to him of strength, though, I believe they see the grey of the morning after the night fires, grieving in a locked and shuttered room where they find each other shaken. Jesus would suffer and be killed, and they would be scattered.

The Daily office gospel this morningrecounts two moments traditional to Monday of Holy Week: the cleansing of the temple and the cursing of the fig tree. Jesus enters the temple and drives from its courts with a whip the money-changers and the bargainers who have made of the Lord's house a "den of thieves." Shortly after, while walking in the countryside with Jesus, the disciples find withered to its roots a fig tree Jesus had cursed for its fruitlessness. The first is a scene of a fate sealed, of the inevitability of Christ's Passion. The second is a prefigurement of desolation.

Today we walk with the disciples and follow a man we know will die. And we know the longer we stay with him the closer we will see the agony of his wounds.

O that God would steal us away and give us hearts prepared for himself.


In Christ,
Fr. Peter