As I sit here in the last few minutes of Holy Thursday I cannot help but try and imagine what that last night of Jesus's earthly life must have been like for him and for his followers. Jesus has been arrested. The final trial and condemnation will have to waist until daylight.
Jesus has prayed that the cup be taken away but now knows that the answer from the Father is "No." Judas has betrayed him and Peter has denied him and most of the rest have abandoned him. How long and dark this night must have seemed to Jesus and to all those who followed him. Where did they go? How did they pass this night?All the pain. All the suffering and sadness. And tomorrow there is even more to come.
Two millennia later, we sleep comfortably in our beds the beneficiaries of a that suffering, that sacrifice. Tomorrow around the world Christians will walk the way of the Cross, we wil read St. John's account of the passion. We will venerate the cross on which he died.
How fully are we willing to embrace that passion?
