Dark Night Again....

Matthew 27:46 Douay-Rheims 

46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying: Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani? that is, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

One of the few "lights"of Holy Week for the person in the Dark Night. is that Christ joins us in His Own darkness. Christ allowed Himself to take our sins upon Himself and experience the type of suffering we suffer daily because of our sins and the sins of others.

Joining us in humanity, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity became Incarnate specifically to free us from Original, mortal and venial sins.

Christ enters liturgically into His Dark Night of the Spirit, not because of His sin, as He is Perfect, Innocence, Good, but because of our sins. We join His sacrifice in the Masses we attend, but especially this week in the climax of Lent,  in this Passion Week and in the Triduum.

As I enter this week, I am grateful to God for His Sacrifice, when He chose suffering, both spiritual and bodily, so that I do not have to go to hell. Grace upon grace is given to us through His Passion and Death on the Cross, and through His Resurrection. Christ overcame death and sin, conquering Satan, undoing the damage done by our First Parents.

This is the week of Christ's joining with us as we see on Good Friday in the terrible words of pain and faith as noted above.

We neither despair, nor do we pretend to be something other than we are--sinners standing at the foot of the Cross. And, if we love Christ, we are on Calvary not merely for ourselves, but for Him. But, there is no consolation on this Place of the Skull, only the agony which brings victory over sin and death.

The Mass is the real, not symbolic, recreation of Calvary in an unbloody manner. Everytime we go to Mass, we are standing, again, at the foot of the Cross.

Let us all pause and thank God for His Goodness shown to us most clearly in Holy Week.