Reflection for Maundy Thursday - 17th April 2025
These days everyone has to be ‘passionate’ about something, whether it be brewing coffee, manufacturing ready meals or whatever. You are likely to see ‘we are passionate about orange juice’ on the carton at breakfast. There are no half measures, no place for being lukewarm about things. Life is to be lived to the full and it is our passion that gives it meaning, but I do wonder whether many of the things about which people claim to be passionate are really the right things to give meaning to their lives.
We are now embarking on the Great Three Days that mark the Passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. Here is a Passion big enough to give meaning to our lives. Maybe we should ponder what it means to be passionate about the Passion of Christ?
Our Lenten refectory reading by Ronald Rolheiser1 explored ways in which we can enter in to the passion of Christ and live what I might dare to call ‘passionate’ lives. Jesus worked a divine alchemy as he accepted all the hatred and anger that was hurled at him without retaliating in kind. In his Passion he allowed himself to be given up to the worst that human beings can do and so entered into the deepest darkness and suffering that is the lot of fallen humanity. His open-hearted surrender transmuted into love all that evil could do and shone light into the darkest recesses of wickedness. Agape love came to birth in his life, death and resurrection and we too are called to bring to birth that selfless love in our own lives.
As we follow him, we must take up the crosses that life imposes upon us and not retaliate to protect our own selfish interests. Our lives become passionate as we embrace in open-hearted surrender the negativity, the difficult circumstances, the things we wish could be different. We do not squash our feelings of anger, resentment or despair but neither do we allow them to control our reactions. The path of the Passion is to feel them to the full but by God’s grace to respond with love. It is a painful path but one that brings real transformation.
The monastic tradition is one of cultivating ‘apatheia’, of not being controlled by our passions. It is not a recipe for being cold and lifeless but rather one for enabling us to let go of the passionate feelings that bubble up from our selfish desires and not let them take over. We acknowledge and name those feelings but then turn to the crucified one to ask his healing for those painful and broken parts of ourselves. As we do that we are no longer at the mercy of these earthly passions but rather can embody the one true Passion of the love of Christ. The love of Christ – both his love for us and ours for him – empowers us to live life to the full, welcoming whatever comes.
The Rule of St Benedict lays out practices that embody this transformative path. We are called to engage daily with setting aside our own agendas in simple acts of obedience to the common life of the community and in treating each member with love and respect. All the time there are little deaths to be faced as we are challenged to put the desires of others ahead of our own and to accept that we will not always get our own way. As we age we also have to accept the letting go of abilities we once had and the difficulties imposed by declining health. Benedict bids us keep death daily before our eyes, acknowledging the ultimate letting go of all that is dear to us in this life. The daily letting go of our own desires is one way we keep death before our eyes and start to see things from the perspective of eternity. The importance of ‘Me, myself and mine’ dwindles away in this bigger picture.
Fearless acceptance of whatever life brings to us, and of our eventual death, is what enables us to live truly passionate lives, lives that bear the stamp of the Passion of Christ. Over these coming days we are invited to enter once again into the mystery of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. May we find afresh the meaning of our lives in this one great Passion.
Mother Anne - 17th April 2025
1‘The Passion and the Cross: Daily Readings for Lent’ by Ronald Rolheiser