A Slow Walk
A Holy Week Reflection
There is a heaviness to this week.
Not a bad heaviness, exactly. More like the weight of something real.
Holy Week is a slow walk through the last few days of Jesus’ life, and what gets me every year is how utterly human it is. We’re not talking about theological abstractions here. We’re talking about friends gathered around a table, sharing bread and wine. We’re talking about someone getting down on their knees to wash the dirt off another person’s feet. We’re talking about a man in a garden, sweating and trembling, asking if there’s another way — while his closest friends fall asleep..
Blood. Sweat. Tears. Literally.
And then the scattering. When it all falls apart, everyone runs. The people who swore they wouldn’t? Well, they are first out of the gate. Peter, who meant every word when he said I will never deny you? Well, he denies him. Three times. Before the sun even comes up.
These are not sanitized spiritual moments. They are the kind of moments that live in the body. The kind we recognize, even if we can’t say exactly why.
We are living through a heavy time.
Most of us know what it is to open our phones in the morning and feel the weight of the headlines settle into our chests. There is so much suffering in the world right now. There is so much that is painful and complex.. And there is a very understandable temptation to look away. To keep moving. To act like this is normal, because if we stopped to feel all of it, how would we function?
But Holy Week will not let us look away.
It walks us, slowly, through suffering. It asks us to stay at the table even when things are about to break. To stay in the garden even when we’re exhausted. To watch, and grieve, and not rush to the ending.
There’s something in that. Something about what it means to witness. To refuse to let suffering, Christ’s or our neighbors’, become just background noise.
I don’t want to draw the lines too neatly. But I wonder if we feel the weight of this week more acutely because of the world we’re living in right now. Or maybe the world feels more unbearable because we haven’t learned to stay present to it the way Holy Week asks us to stay present to the story.
Maybe both.
Paying attention is a spiritual practice. A difficult one. It costs something to really look — at the news, at our neighbors, at the ancient story we’re walking through this week. It is easier to skim. To only catch headlines. To stay on the surface. To get to Sunday without really passing through Friday.
But there is something that happens in us when we stay. When we let the weight land. When we sit with the bread and wine and let it mean something. When we feel the vulnerability of having our feet washed, or the shame of scattering when we said we wouldn’t.
We become more human. And maybe, more ready.
So as we walk through these days, here are a few questions to ponder:
Where in your own life are you tempted to look away from something that needs your presence?
What does it feel like in your body to stay — to really stay — with something hard?
Where do you see yourself in the Holy Week story? At the table? In the garden? Running? In denial?
What would it mean to not rush to resurrection — to let Sunday come to you, instead of chasing it?
And it will come. That’s the thing. We don’t manufacture Easter. We don’t earn it or rush it into being. We just walk. Slowly. Honestly. And Easter meets us.
The story doesn’t end in the garden. It doesn’t end with the scattering, or the denial, or the silence of Friday.
But we’re not there yet.
For now, we keep going. One step at a time.