Living the Passion of the Pandemic

“This is the lentiest Lent I ever lented.” I’ve seen this quote on Facebook a couple times, and although I can’t take credit for it, I can certainly affirm it. This year we gave up more than the usual chocolate or swearing or whatever we usually sacrifice during this season. This year’s circumstances forced us to give up things that are deeply important to us – events, being with loved ones, freedom of movement, even the sense of safety that we usually take for granted.

And here we are on Palm Sunday, the onset of Holy Week. We’ll read through all of the Passion accounts, go over every detail of what happened, beginning this Sunday and moving through the week. We’ll witness Jesus enduring every kind of suffering: emotional suffering, like betrayal, spiritual suffering, like feeling abandoned by God, physical suffering, like torture.

Engaging with each detail of the Passion, moving forward and back around again to each moment, might bring up some of your own life experiences. It might remind you of the past or draw comparisons with the present. That’s a good thing. That’s what it’s supposed to do. The Passion is not just a re-enactment of what happened to the historical Jesus all those years ago. It’s not reliving the narrative and pretending we don’t know what happened. We do know what happened. We move through this week knowing full well the fullness of the story: Jesus suffered profoundly and died and then was raised from the dead. The reason we visit these experiences of Jesus each year is to commemorate the original events and to acknowledge that they are still happening, continuously unfolding in each of us. The point of these holy days is to pray through the suffering of the living Christ, the Christ who lives, loves, suffers, and rises in us – individually and communally.

Christ knows what we’re going through. Jesus walked this way before and experienced isolation, betrayal, uncertainty, loneliness, and fear. He understood physical pain and helplessness. However, Christ’s experiences are not confined to these moments of the Passion captured by each Gospel writer. Christ knows what we’re experiencing in this present moment as he suffers the fear, grief, isolation, uncertainty, and pain that we suffer right now. Every time we feel disconnected from our loved ones or doubt that God is with us, Christ feels that too. Christ is very close with us right now. As we move through this sacred time, I hope we open ourselves to Christ’s presence, sharing each grief and struggle and heartbreak.

Today I’m really grieving the loss of our usual Holy Week celebrations. I’m filled with sadness and longing, and it will probably get worse as the week unfolds. I miss my religious, parish, and God Space communities and my family – all the people I usually celebrate these days with. I will miss the beautiful liturgies of Holy Week and Easter. However, maybe it’s fitting that the well-choreographed grandeur of these days just got messy and chaotic. The original Passion was anything but curated and pretty, just like our lives are anything but neatly arranged. Our suffering is not a scripted Passion Play but an unfolding bit by bit of uncertainty, growth, helplessness, and trust. Maybe this year more than ever before we’ll be able to bring the Passion events to heart and see how they unfold in our own lives. Given what we’re all living through now, this year’s Holy Week may be the most passionate Passion we’ve ever passioned. And just as God was with Jesus through every moment of his Passion, God is with us too.

So, let’s passion as we’ve never passioned before, trusting that we will get through this. Just as we suffer with Christ and Christ suffers in us, we also rise with Christ and Christ rises in us. Our rising from the pandemic is still a ways off, but it will come. The sun always rises. God always brings resurrection after death.

By Sister Leslie Keener, CDP

Sister Leslie Keener, CDP is the director of God Space, a community-building spirituality ministry in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. She’s a Sister of Divine Providence with a Masters in Ministry and a Certificate in Spiritual Direction and Retreats from Creighton University. She directs retreats, meets with people for spiritual direction, and serves as the vocation director for her community. She also serves on the Coordinating Council of Spiritual Directors International. She enjoys music, dancing, meaningful conversations, and Holy Week.