A personal resurrection...

Dear friends,

The last few days have been tumultous timewise — the older I get the more I find time the great prison that constrains us all ... there is never enough of it, and the prison is as constraining for the Pope or the President of the United States as it is for the lowliest creature in God's creation ... none of us can buy more than the 24 hours in every day. It has also been exhilarating catching up with my own children, their partners, meeting old friends again and sharing a little of this most precious of all commodities, time, with the many new friends that have come into my life through my working partnership with Amanda McKenna which is now sacramentalised in marriage as well.

Exchange of vows

It was not specifically planned to hold our marriage on the eve of Holy Week — that came about accidentally but there has also been something serendipitous about it. Milly and I had known one another as fellow contributors to the CathNews discussion board for about two years prior to our even considering the possibility that we might have other deeper yearings in common let alone the possibility that we might be potential life partners.

How our relationship actually began is that I was relief editor for CathNews at the time and I offered to do a review of a new cd that Amanda had released. I contacted her asking if she had a website that I might review as a way of drawing attention to her music. It turned out she didn't so I offered to construct something simple.

It was a little after that that we had begun a series of Lenten Reflections on the CathNews discussion board and I proposed that I construct a multi-media reflection based on Amanda's song, Take This Cup Away, as a way of ending the series of reflections on Good Friday that our relationship started to "plumb some depths" as it were. At this stage we had still not met and were located on opposite sides of this vast continent.

I suppose the usual in most relationships is that one is attracted to the other by physical characteristics. When we fall "in love" with someone the initial attractions are physical and sensual and it is only much later one begins to plumb the depths of deeper emotional stuff. Our relationship began in the opposite way. Amanda's song, Take This Cup Away, had been written many years before in the depths of her own "Gesthemane moment". I had also had a "Gesthemane moment" in my own life some decade earlier and we found ourselves in a much deeper personal sharing than that which would normally be involved in putting together some liturgy, or a multi-media reflection. We found ourselves walking in very painful, personal and curiously sacred space.

The expression "Gesthemane moment" is a misnomer. I suspect Jesus' own "Agony in the Garden" was not merely confined to some overnight period of anguish and trial but that story of the "Agony in the Garden" is an artist's way of bringing to a focus an event, or series of events, that were actually played out over a period of months or years of mental anguish as Jesus discerned "the correct answer" or "which way is up". Certainly the Agony in the Garden would have been the crux point where it all finally came into focus and the answer was finally revealed but the agony would, more than likely, not be merely confined to the few hours leading up to that story which has been encapsulated in the Gospels.

"Gesthemane moments"

From many years of reflection on this story, and observation of others around me in the light of that story and experience, I am of the opinion that "Gesthemane moments" are a universal in everyone's life. Like birth and death, at some point or other in life we are all brought to a crunch point. What is not universal is the ways in which we respond to our Gesthemane moments.

As I read Jesus' Passion story the more I find myself inclined to read it as a sort of template that somehow condenses the entire range of responses that we human beings are capable of bringing to the "Gesthemane moments" in our lives. The actors in Jesus' story are like the actors in a play who stand as archetypes of the enormous range of responses human beings can bring to those great moments of testing we all face at some point or other in our lives. We all have a bit of the "mob mentality" in us. All of us have a bit of Judas in us. All of us at times act like Peter. All of us act at times like the sleeping companions. We would have all experienced at some time the sort of anguish of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, or of Mary Magdalene, his friend who found the tomb empty. Then there's Simon of Cyrene, and the Roman soldier who pierced his side with a lance, and those, such as Herod and Pontius Pilate, who were in leadership positions in the community at that time.

At the end of all our analysis of these characters in the Jesus' story though — and our own self-analysis of our own stories — there are not a myriad of "correct responses". There is one "correct response". There is only one "life-giving" response that eventually leads to resurrection. And, curiously enough, it is the only one that seems capable of transcending (enabling us to walk above) whatever agony and trials might be placed in our pathways prior to the Resurrection point.

The crux point of the Jesus' story, to my way of thinking, is not actually the crucifixion itself. The crux point of the Jesus' story comes in the Olive Grove when Jesus comes to the realisation that the only way forward is by abandoning his fears, and ego, and giving way to "the will of the Father" — but not his "father" as in Joseph, his earthly father, or any similar earthly "authority" figure but the only "Father" that ultimately matters for all of us — women and men, rich and poor, healthy and unhealthy alike — our Divine Father and Mother ... the One who gives life and meaning to us in the ultimate sense.

I have to confess I've not studied this in any detail but the thought has occurred to me in writing this reflection that the commitment we make at the altar in marriage is, in a very real sacramental sense, an echo of this commitment Jesus himself makes in the Garden of Gesthemane. Perhaps the commitments we make in each of the Sacraments are in a very real sense a "sacramental echo" or "sign" that are meant to unite us with this commitment Jesus makes in the Garden of Gesthemane?

To end this reflection I invite you to sit quietly with this sung reflection by my creative partner, and now wife, Amanda McKenna, that both has special poignancy for Amanda and I and, I suggest, has a wider poignancy as we all reflect on the journey Jesus made all those centuries ago to the Resurrection of Easter Sunday.

Blessings, Brian

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©2007Brian Coyne

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