April 8, 2020 - Wednesday of Holy Week

Gospel Reading:  Is 50:4-9a; Ps 69; Matt 26:14-25

Today’s Gospel brings us into the story of Judas’ betrayal as we prepare for tomorrow’s celebration of the Lord’s Supper. However, it is the agony of Christ in the Garden, anticipating the suffering that is to come, that seems to loom large in today’s psalms. I begin to quiet myself as I think of the many circumstances and fears from which I have uttered today’s command: “Lord, in your great love, answer me.” It has often been a desperate cry in times when my faith was shaken by so much injustice and suffering in the world. My desire to fully know God’s will and make sense of it all has often left me so fragile and lonely, even frustrated as I call out to a God who seems hopelessly beyond this place. Does God really answer?

And yet for all of the desolation that infuses these readings, they offer even more in the way of a spirited resolve. As the first reading reminds us, what God gives us through the person of Christ is nothing less than God’s own way of seeing, hearing and responding to the world. In my own moments of doubt and fear, that will to listen with love and speak for and with “the weary” brings something far more than solace. To experience that desperation brings a will to enact, however partially, God’s love for the world.