9th April, 2006

DON’T CUT IT TOO FINE!

I don’t know if you ever have the experience of knowing that there’s something that you have inevitably got to do some day, but you keep putting it on the long finger, hoping maybe that something will happen that will make it less stressful. And in your heart you know, that nothing’s going to change – you might as well go and get it over with. I’m not talking life-and-death decisions here, or even potentially painful situations, like visits to the dentist.

Let me come clean – I’m talking about going to the barber. I can hear you saying “what’s the big deal – he’s old enough to have done it hundreds of times”? The big deal is that I never risked it in Paris before. Now in all honesty it has nothing to do with the historic reputation of the French when they have sharp implements in the vicinity of the necks of the clergy, but more to do with communication. I haven’t yet come to the chapter about going to the barber in my French lessons. (Interesting, though, that I only had to get to chapter 5 to learn about ‘manifestation’, ‘grève’ and ‘syndicats’!)

But I was beginning to look a little like an old English sheepdog, and feared that shortly I wouldn’t be able to see out at all. So, having got Fr. Ephrem to make an appointment for me, I went off armed with my two words, ‘coupe’ – I had learned this word when I was stationed in Scotland – it came into the Scottish phrase for ‘lawn-mower’, a ‘coup-de-grass’- and ‘seule’, which roughly means ‘and don’t be doing anything else’, wondering whether I’d come back a skinhead or a Mohican, or what. As it turned out, the guy did a very acceptable job. Once we had established that my French was of the very limited variety he recognised that this was going to be no chit-chat session, and hence gave his full attention to his tonsorial art. My worries had been needless. A huge weight, as it were, has been taken off my head/mind.

But isn’t that the way with so many of our worries? They turn out to have been needless. During this coming week we’re invited travel along with Jesus, as He takes the weight of our worries and cares, of our faults and our failings, and transforms them in the mystery of our Redemption. We set out on a journey with Him from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, a journey that takes us from the hopes raised that Jesus would be the acclaimed Messiah whose Kingdom all people would accept, through the institution of the Eucharist on Holy Thursday, and on into the betrayal, by disciples and people in general, that led to His crucifixion and death on Good Friday, that He might rise to new life on Easter Sunday.

We’re invited, not as spectators, but as participants; participants who recognise so much of themselves in the various characters of the story – the fickleness of the crowd, the betrayal of Judas, the cowardice of Peter, the blindness of the Sanhedrin, the cynicism of the Romans, the gentleness and suffering of Mary, the generosity of Veronica and Simon, the awe of the Roman soldier by the cross. Our hope is that we can be transformed by our participation in this mystery, and that we will rise with Him to New life