When Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his new tomb which he had hewn out of the rock; and he rolled a large stone against the door of the tomb, and departed. And Mary Magdalene was there, and the other Mary, sitting opposite the tomb. Matthew 27:59-61

Jesus’s real purpose in this sacrifice was to wager his own life against his core conviction that love is stronger than death, and that the laying down of self which is the essence of this love leads not to death, but to life. . . . Thus, the real domain of the Paschal Mystery is not dying but dying-to-self. (Center for Action and Contemplation)

Our Lent introduction ended with questions about what helps when experiencing thresholds in faith and life…

What metaphor or question may we inhabit? What way or request may we follow?

The practicalities and the paradox of living

I have often read that good spirituality is all about letting go, that we must learn to die before we die. These words have struck me, however reluctantly, as wise words, as fundamental to the quality of life that we may experience. The new can’t be experienced without the old in some shape or form falling away. The poet Robert Frost (I think) echoes this too with his line, ‘we live by shedding’. I can’t think of a better reminder of this than the self-emptying acts of Jesus, of which this is but one example.

In this sculpture Jesus’ raised hand indicates in the middle of death that this end is not the whole story. He seems to be connecting with, or encouraging in, his mother a recognition of a path, of the ebb and flow of giving and letting go. Not only her, but his disciples and through on to us.

‘Every new beginning is the child of an ending it did not think it would survive.’ (Anon)