By way of a friend who is also a homilist I admire, I find myself here on Good Friday considering the Latin root passio, meaning suffering, enduring, being acted upon.  In all of my language and faith loving years, it never occurred to me to look up why the suffering and death of Jesus is referred to the Passion until I heard her preach about it on Palm Sunday. I’ve been glad to have a week or so to roll this around and see how it shapes my thinking, considering, feeling, emotions surrounding, these days.  

It has made me think of how being ‘passive’ (same root) is often seen as being bland, indifferent, or without strength. Yet, these days are anything but bland, indifferent, or without inner reserve/strength.  Just this morning, while praying I thought about the courage of Jesus…the courage it takes to not resist… To not resist…what?  Life, Change, Hurt, Wound, The courage it takes to allow for that…to allow for the possibility of it…to face outward, arms down, and walk onward, not knowing.  Or, yes knowing.  

It sounds like it could be contradictory…because sometimes resistance is Exactly the thing called for.  In the face of injustice, hate, the foment of violence, prejudice, judgement…

And maybe it isn’t about resisting or allowing, particularly.  I return to the idea of facing outward, walking onward… Perhaps it’s encountering what Is, listening for what we are called to do by God, by conscience, by circumstance, that serves the Greatest Good, that serves Love.  And allow that to happen.  

It will mean vulnerability, fear,  possible failure, possible success, uncertainty, questions, doubts, loss, and more…if we welcome events and our engagement with them to act upon us.  To shape us ever more truly into the fullness of who we are called to be.

That takes courage and it takes a community…for strength…for the story to be carried onward. Without Jesus’ community, with all of their own courage as well as fears and insecurities (and sleepiness), there would be no story to tell now.

On this Good Friday, I pray that I may be courageous and allow myself to be shaped in thought, word, and deed, by the call of Love.  May I too enter into passio-time when fullness beckons….open, willing, honest, surrounded. May I stand in solidarity with others and not fall asleep when the cross is theirs to bear.

(Side note, while in the midst of writing this, I had a walk in the Public Gardens and saw all of Earth’s courageous allowing…trusting that the snow has ended…sensing the rising temperatures that foretell the coming of Spring…daring to bloom…Nature does not hold back from the call of the seasons.  And that is Good and beautiful indeed.)