As we enter into this Great and Holy Week, I believe that the Call to Holiness is a call to truly reflect upon the events in Christ’s life as real and true revelations about how we must live if we truly wish to be children of our Heavenly Father. I truly believe that if we sincerely enter into the observance of Great and Holy Week, we will discover that God has, out of love for us, given us a guide for living this human, earthly life. That guide is His Son, Jesus. The events that we remember are meant to help us find the true meaning and purpose of life. They are not just abstract, historical events that have no meaning. They truly reflect in some way, I believe, how we must live if we desire to grow in our union with our God.

Jesus, as truly man, embraced the challenges of His life as real opportunities to grow in His trust of our Heavenly Father. The events of the last days of His life truly challenged Him to trust in the Father and to accept life as it was presented to Him. There were opportunities in the last days of His life, to escape the challenges that He and others foresaw. The fact that He was repeatedly challenged by the leaders of Judaism, told Him that they were upset with His actions and interpretations of their religion. So He was quite aware that they might try something to silence Him. In fact the Gospels tell us that His disciples tried to keep Him from going to Jerusalem.

Much like the prophets before Him, He realized that He had to present the truth as He knew it to be. Like the prophets before Him, He realized that to run away in fear of what might happen to Him, would be tantamount to telling people that what He taught was not true. Prophets before Him were killed for speaking the truth, albeit not in quite as horrendous manner. Besides being God’s only-begotten Son, Jesus was also truly a prophet.