Holy Week Reflection

The telegram arrived early on Good Friday 1980. It informed me that my bishop had decided to sponsor me to train to be a priest. The very next thing in my diary that morning was to carry the processional cross for the sung liturgy, as all around me the choir of King’s College, Cambridge, where I was researching in mathematics, sang Allegri’s setting of the Miserere. It struck me then, that the message I had just received was my calling to hold up the cross of Jesus before God’s people not just for an hour one Spring Friday morning but for the rest of my life.

What had drawn me first to the Christian faith, and then on to seeking ordination, was the powerful sense I had of the God who, in Jesus Christ, knew me better than any earthly person, and at the same time loved me more deeply than any human being ever could. Jesus showed that limitless love throughout his ministry. He healed the sick, freed those held captive by evil, listened to the voices of outcasts, confronted the perpetrators of injustice. Above all, he forgave sinners, often even before they had plucked up the courage to repent.

This was a Jesus I wanted both to follow and to hold up so that others like me could come to know him, or to know him better. This was the forgiveness and love he showed supremely that first Holy Week, when on what Christians now call Good Friday, he allowed himself to be murdered for love of you and me.

Nailed to the cross, Jesus proved conclusively that his love and forgiveness had no limits, not even death itself.