This is the week called "holy", the time of Passover, of bearing fruit, of enduring and of "not rebelling and not turning back". Instead we walk together and pray to God for "a well-trained tongue so that we might know how to speak to the weary a word that will rouse them." We paradoxically cry out the refrain of the responsorial psalm over and over again: "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" and proclaim equally that "I will proclaim your name to our people, in the midst of the assembly I will praise you ... I will give glory to God."

 This week we practice dying and rising, handing over our lives and loves and receiving wild hope and the spirit of God that will rescue us. Our attitude must be that of Christ who "did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at. Rather he emptied himself and took the form of a slave ... and it was thus that he humbled himself, obediently accepting death, even death on a cross." Practice is over. This is is. We stand and fall together into the arms of our God, with Jesus, handing over our spirits...