Holy Monday: Mary did you know? This Child who you deliver will soon deliver you

Today the venerable passion shines forth upon the world as the light of salvation; for Christ, out of goodness, hastens to His sufferings. He who holds all things in the hollow of His hand, consents to be hung upon the tree in order to save mankind.

 This is the First Kathisma from the Service of the Bridegroom, a liturgy of the East which spans from Holy Monday to Holy Wednesday.  As we begin Holy Week as a fractured church, rent apart by schisms two millennia long, the Church Universal, that ineffable mystery hidden from our sight, spans time and space as the towering witness to Christ's libation on Calvary.  The one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church exists in the mind of God, as the men and women who constitute it have failed to hold t together.  But, this Church stands vigil with John and the Marys at the foot of the tree, gazing on the body rent in iron and blood under the Judean sun.  This Church holds her children round her skirts, bringing them as she stands fast as the Christ suffers through all time.  The crucifixion, though fixed locotemporally, is perpetuated throughout all time as the sacrifice of the sacred for the mundane.  The Church stands as mourner for that pain and suffering given for her by her Bridegroom, stretched on the tree.

On the day after the crowds cheered and welcomed him into Jerusalem, the Christ knew of his impending doom.  But what of His mother?  What of His friends and followers?  Could they sense the destruction of the Creator looming close?  Along with Mary of Nazareth, along with Mary of Magdala, and John the Beloved, along with Judas the Traitor, and Peter the Betrayer, this Monday let us hold our collective breath as we begin to sense that not everything is right.  As that unsettling feeling of the impending maelstrom sets upon us and the chill wisp of the sublime causes us to shiver, let us cling more closely to the skirts of the Church our mother, and watch as the divine drama unfolds across the universe.  Let's walk the path of Holy Week together, divided as Christians, but united together in the Bridegroom.