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We make our approach to the foot of the Cross--spiritually and sacramentally--in the liturgical services of the Holy Week, in St Petersburg and Venice; and, subsequently, we approach the Cross with more intensity, with more grace, prepared for the spiritual battles that wage within.
For the closer we get to the Cross (in the union of our will to the submission of Christ to the Father--in His Salvific Suffering), the more the devil ramps up his viscious and maliscious attacks!
For as Jesus' Holy Week
onday revealed the battle which ensued, so should ours in the self-realization of the Messianic-mission yet to be fully accomplished within our own heart!
For Jesus, out of friendship, out of Merciful Love, visited his friend Lazarus; he who tasted a morsel of the Resurrection. And Jesus, desiring to spend precious time with Martha, the active, and Mary, the contemplative (fully aware that his hour was speedily approaching), recognized the inauguration of the demons onslaught in the face of the Christ who approaches His Cross.
For the closer Christ gets to the consumation of our salvation, the more fiercely the legions of death struggle to thwart him!
And the same is true when we carry our cross in the Spirit of the Merciful Lord!
For Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, was darkly driven to criticize the contemplative compassion of Mary, as she prophetically anointed our Savior in the nard and the tears of the appreciatively redeemed; for Judas' greed, and his false concern for the poor, was really the devils despair!
The chief priests, the Sanhedrin, the religious powers that be, plotted the downfall of the Christ, as their Holy Week monday was spent in scheming and rationalizing Jesus' arrest as the defense of the people against the wrath of the Romans, a defense of the Temple against the 'defilement' of Jesus' cleansing, and a defense against the blasphemy of a rogue Nazarene 'prophet.' Yet, these pious and concerned pillars of Judah were definitively revealed as the pawns of the Prince of darkness in the evil spirit of envious avarice and vain-glorious self-preservation.
And Gesmas and Dismas, the reluctant rebel, and the repentant rebel, soon to join the Lord on His splintery Throne, these men were surely the victims of one hell of a Holy Week of torment as they approached their destiny. Only Dismas embraced the grace which conquers the devils despair!
And Peter, moreso than his brothers eleven, sans the lost Judas, felt the wrath of the Satan, as his spirit so deeply desired to defend His Lord, but his flesh so easily succumbed to the threat of annhilation. As the cock crowed, so did Peter, as a puppet in the hands of the diabolic puppeteer!