Tuesday of Holy Week
Readings: IS 49:1-6; JN 13:21-33, 36-38
The first reading from Isaiah offers us a line that I’m sure many of us can relate to, “I thought I had toiled in vain, and for nothing, uselessly, spent my strength.” I am guessing that anyone who is reading this has thought something similar about an undertaking or relationship. We might have wondered, “Why did I pour myself into this for nothing?”
My guess is that Jesus felt this with some regularity. While we might think of him as the “son of God,” I am not convinced that he had supernatural powers. What I mean by this is that when he experienced doubt, discouragement and second-guessing, he did not get a divine pass. He felt it and had to sit with the difficulty of those feelings.
In the gospel, Jesus is celebrating the Passover meal with his closest disciples. It is at this meal that he announces that one of those people will betray him (Judas) and in just a short time one will deny him (Peter). I mean it always hurts when people do this to us (in general). But when it’s the people closest to us that do this, well, it hurts all the more.
Today’s readings place us squarely in the thick of human pain. Jesus is going through a very difficult time, and we do too (whether it’s happening to us now or has happened to us in the past). We experience betrayal, discouragement and doubt. People turn their backs on us, misunderstand us and laugh at us. People hope to trap us somehow or delight in our failing.
I was with a woman lately who has had many, many things go wrong in her life and especially in the past few weeks. People have seriously deserted her at her time of need. In a recent conversation, she said words similar to what is said in the first reading, “But I know that God has got me…I may not be able to see it, but I know it.”
When life hands us really hard circumstances, it can get easy to doubt ourselves and feel badly about who we are. Isaiah encourages us to remember that we are “made glorious in the sight of the LORD.” No matter what is going on around us, we are still glorious to God. We have not been forgotten, and God has got us.
Sometimes that is all we have – the knowledge that God has us no matter what we’re going through. I think Jesus knew this, and I pray that we might know it too. The world will let us down, yet God is still there.
For today, no matter what we’re going through, may we be given the grace to feel God’s presence.