JOY ALONG THE WAY: SORROWS AND JOYS OF HOLY WEEK

The days are getting noticeably longer. This means getting up earlier if I want to see the sunrise which I do. I take my usual stance before an east window, in the same place every day, so that I can more readily note the passage of the sunrise as it makes its way northward along the horizon.

I try to visualize my place on the globe as it turns on its axis. My first encounter with a globe was at the Loughboro grade school. It bothered me that it seemed to be attached crooked in the frame which held it in place. I wanted it to be straight up and down, as if the north pole was always pointed at the ceiling and the south pole to the floor. None of our pull-down wall maps nor textbooks showed the continents at a slanted position.

The longer I stand at the window watching the sunrise and thinking about the globe, I tend to slant my body northward as if to get parallel with the earth as it turns in space. When I'm about to fall over, I realize it is my weakened knees that are giving way and I hasten to a nearby chair. There, once again, I seem to be on a steady, upright world. The sunshine floods the room with brightness and everything is good. Here is a new day full of big fat hours to be filled with the things I can and still want to do.

Later, after breakfast and well-coated, I go to the back porch to look around for confirmation that, indeed, everything is all right. The only thing that looks a bit slanted, parallel to the tilted globe, is a stick in a pot where, last fall, I had tried to make a transplanted marigold stand up straight.

Back inside, aware that it is Holy Week, I pull from the bookshelf Jim Bishop's book, "The Day Christ Died," which follows the events of that long ago week day by day, indeed, hour by hour.

Soon I am identified with some of Bishop's characters. I am a housewife that has gone to the town well to get water. Many other housewives are there and they are talking about the Galilean who claims to be the Messiah and is now in Jerusalem.

"Where?" one inquires.

A knowledgeable one replies, "He is on Solomon's porch during the daylight hours, explaining more things. At night he goes back to the olive groves."

"What is he explaining?" asks another.

"Among other things he has told about things that will happen at the end of the world. "There will be turmoil and the courage of many people will falter ... but stand straight and look up. I will be there."

Then Bishop moves along and I move with him at what would be our time of 8 p.m., Thursday, AD 33. I'm there in the upper room sharing the Passover meal. I'm eating the bread which Jesus has said is his body which he is going to give for our sake and drinking the wine which he said was his blood to be shed for the remission of our sins.

I pause in my reading to wonder if I had actually been there in person that evening if I would have fully understood what he was saying. Probably not.

At 9 p.m. Thursday, 33 A.D., in Bishop's narrative, I leave the upper room and go along at midnight to the Garden of Gethsemane and hear Jesus say, along the way, what he had said many times before, 'Love one another as I loved you.'

At 3 a.m., Friday, 33 A.D., I see the Roman soldiers and palace guards come to arrest Jesus. At 4 a.m. I am at the Sanhedrin, hearing the accusation of blasphemy, penalty of which is death.

For the rest of that Friday morning Jesus is prodded and dragged from the Sanhedrin to the High Priest's quarters, to the Roman governor, Pilate, back across town to Herod's palace, back to Pilate. I walk with the crowd, weary and bedraggled. At 11 a.m. I hear the chilling words of Pilate, 'I am innocent of this blood. The responsibility is yours.'

The brutal walk toward Golgatha begins. I'm there. I hear the hammering, the moaning, see the gambling, hear Jesus' last words.

By 3 p.m. Friday, 33 A.D., it is over.

I lay Bishop's book aside. It has been painful to read, painful to identify with the characters, to see the blood, the piercing, the taking down.

I walk, weakly, perhaps slantingly, to the kitchen for a cup of coffee, half expecting it to taste like vinegar.

But, yet, like a warm secret next to my heart, I know it is going to come out right like a story with a happy ending.

And it does! When I resume my reading, I'm there in the garden on Easter morning. My feet are wet with dew. I see the flowers that are blooming. I witness the empty tomb. I am Mary to whom Jesus reveals himself. He is not dead! I hasten away to tell the others, to remind them that he said, 'There will be turmoil, and many will lose courage, but stand straight and look up. I will be there.'

I close the book softly, put it back on the shelf and again go outside. It is still morning. The jonquil, daylily, larkspur and hollyhock greenery are all standing up smartly straight, awaiting their time of blossoming glory. There are disappearing red scallops in the air where a cardinal is measuring some future territory. Neighbors are coming and going. Two doves huddle close together on the high wire. Squirrels move around jerkily and I want to shout, "Stand up. He is here!"

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardea.