Deep-down Tastes

Why is it that we proclaim the Passion of Jesus on Palm Sunday when it is proclaimed again on Good Friday?

This year the Gospel of Mark is proclaimed – starting with the nameless woman anointing the head of Jesus, finishing with the burial of Jesus.

The Church desires that we contemplate the Passion of Jesus for the week that is called ‘Holy Week.’

This is not a request that we deepen our intellectual knowledge of Jesus and his death – as important as that may well be.

Rather, we are being asked to feel what Jesus felt.

St. Ignatius (1491-1556) bequeathed The Spiritual Exercises. He is insistent that the Exercises are not about head-knowledge but about intimacy with God.

The original, literal preliminary observations of the Exercises reads:

For it is not knowing much, but realising and relishing things interiorly, that contents and satisfies the soul.

A contemporary translation puts it this way:

For in a retreat we do not find knowledge satisfying us, but rather deep-down tastes and feelings that sensitise us to what really matters (Fleming, Draw Me Into Your Friendship, 6-7).

So we try to feel the way Jesus felt during his passion and death.

Amen.