Tuesday Holy Week 2009

Although I do not plan to attend Mass until tomorrow to be on the safe side, I have been keeping up with the daily readings. Let me give the passage that started my mind, then I'll explain.

Simon Peter said to him, "Master, where are you going?"
Jesus answered him,
"Where I am going, you cannot follow me now,
though you will follow later."
Peter said to him,
"Master, why can I not follow you now?
I will lay down my life for you."
Jesus answered, "Will you lay down your life for me?
Amen, amen, I say to you, the cock will not crow
before you deny me three times."

That first morning waking up feeling as if someone had punched me in the temple, I thought very little other than maybe I'd hit the headboard in the night. The next day it hurt more. The third day I went to the doctor. The rest is history.

The shingles did not erupt, so that brought up some very old issues for me from the days when I suffered from anxiety so intense most people would have killed themselves, and had to put up with people saying "there's nothing wrong with you, it's all in your head." I was always wishing that there was some outward sign of what was happening to me on the inside. It created an abyss of self doubt that I thought was long gone.

Until the shingles came, and not one shingle erupted on my body. Yet, I suffer the shingles even now as I write, but there is no outward sign that anything is wrong with me. That simple fact has reached back into my distant past and pulled forward an abyss of self doubt. My doctor says, "You do have shingles." My body shows no sign of it. So again, I feel it's my word against those who might look and say "it's all in your head."

Holy Week. This all happens in Holy Week. I had reservations at Gethsemani for this weekend, and had to cancel them because I did not know what kind of outbreak I might have by this weekend. Apparently, no outbreak at all. So I canceled reservations for the holiest time of the year, at my favorite place, and began to grapple with Holy Week spent alone.

Yesterday the doctor told me without an eruption on my face -- Thank God -- I am not contagious to anyone. Shingles cannot be passed person to person, but if you haven't had Chicken Pox you could get them, only from the eruptions! But, alas, too late. My reservation is canceled. And by now you must be wondering what does this have to do with the snippet of the gospel at the top.

"Where I am going you cannot follow me now." You see, I am Peter in this reading. I was so sure that I had Holy Week down pat, things were going to be just as I planned, and then the heavenly WHAM came and said, "Where I am going you cannot follow me now." Immediately I am then presented with all my old self doubt and fears etc, ad naseum.

Until this morning, I'd forgotten that the rest of "Where I am going you cannot follow me now..." is finished with "though you will follow later." I have been forced to face that abyss long assumed filled in. It wasn't, God showed me that , and now it has been filled in. I have been forced to not be where I want to be, and God has showed me that it is okay. The truth is where I am with God, is the only place I need to be. No monastery, or convent, or church, or tradition; nothing can separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus. How easy it is to forget such a simple fact.

Kyrie eleison.