This coming week, we are beckoned by liturgy, scripture and prayer to slow down and more fully consider the final days, hours, minutes and moments of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. As Fr. Joe Tetlow, SJ has written, “These are terrible events, and we are keeping a death watch.” For in these intimate instances with Jesus, we are called to walk with him, listen to his words, witness his pain and suffering, and enter into his time and place.
We are called to ponder these moments of his passion and consider, as St. Ignatius of Loyola writes in his Spiritual Exercises, how Jesus chose to “hide his divinity” so that he could more fully experience his humanity. In his translation of the Exercises, Fr. David Fleming, SJ wrote: “At the time of the Passion, I should pay special attention to how the divinity hides itself so that Jesus seems so utterly human and helpless. (Fleming, Draw Me Into Your Friendship, 149; SE 196). So if Jesus seems weak and helpless on the cross, it’s because he chose to be. No one took his life; he gave it freely. (John 10:18) Consider that.
In a recent email exchange with Fr. Tetlow, he confirmed for me something I remembered him once saying at a workshop — that in the Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius uses the word consider (and its equivalents like ponder) almost as many timesas he uses contemplate. For example, Fr. Joe wrote, in the Contemplation for Love near the end of the Exercises, Ignatius suggests that the retreatant, “consider the gifts that God gives, how God remains in His gifts, and how God is actually sharing the divine being with us. These, Ignatius suggests, all be considered.”
This “considering” is not easy work. It’s easier for us to give a cursory glance or to listen with limited attention to the words we hear on Palm Sunday and during the Triduum. After all, we’ve heard them all before, many times. Noah Webster’s old 1828 dictionary does a good job of taking us beyond the modern notion of consider as merely “to think about.” It says, in part, “the literal sense is, to sit by or close, or to set the mind or the eye to; to view or examine with attention.” To consider is not a moment of casual interest. It’s a chance to pull up a chair and engage deeply with the subject at hand.
So this week, don’t take the easy way out. Don’t ignore what you would rather not see. Go deep. For what’s on display on the cross is much more than the pain; it’s the ultimate love of the Father. Stand at the foot of the cross and consider, as the following song by me and my composing partner Phil Cooper suggests, “all that it takes to give in to the way that He died. Then consider the nails.”
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