If Holy Week begins with Passion Sunday and ends with Good Friday, which is an obligatory day of fasting, mortification, contemplation, and penitential practices, what else is there left to surrender? Haven’t we suffered enough?
Haven’t the Catholics of Hong Kong been carrying a heavy cross with the curtailing of social interactions and the enforcement of a temporary closure of all churches and chapels?
“I could feel the disappointment of many sisters and brothers who could not pray in the soothing tranquility of their churches,” wrote Bishop Stephen Chow, sj, of Hong Kong, “or before the Blessed Sacrament during such a worrisome time.”
If Palm Sunday ushers in Holy Week in penitential observance of Jesus’ scourging at the pillar, crowing with thorns, carrying the cross, excruciating pains and shameful death of Jesus prior to his glorious resurrection, what else is there left to give up?
Medical science says that hematidrosis is an extremely rare physical condition. Now the extremely rare condition has become common. The physical condition becomes psycho-emotional for millions of people in Ukraine due to war and in Hong Kong as the city faces its worst health period since the pandemic began two years ago.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, Ukrainians have also carried the “heavy weight of the cross” on their shoulders, suffering the grave consequences of war, such as unnecessary deaths, destructions to their properties and important religious-historical relics and landmarks, serious injuries, migration of millions of their citizens, sufferings of mind and body, and the brewing hatred in the human psyche.
Going on four months since the fifth wave of Covid-19 hit Hong Kong, the territory mourns over a million infections and more than 7,700 deaths, the bulk of them from the city’s unvaccinated elders.
Even when you’re not cut or wounded, hematidrosis [sweating blood] causes you to perspire or ooze blood through your skin. It means those tiny blood vessels and veins inside your body ruptured under intense stress, emotional, psychological, or both.
This medical condition is what happened to Jesus in his agony in Gethsemane as he perspired blood when bargaining the price of redemption. There, in that garden, Jesus sighed, wept and surrendered to his Father’s will, saying:
“Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” And his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground [Luke 22: 43-44].
Medical science says that hematidrosis is an extremely rare physical condition. Now the extremely rare condition has become common. The physical condition becomes psycho-emotional for millions of people in Ukraine due to war and in Hong Kong as the city faces its worst health period since the pandemic began two years ago.
As Bishop Chow has put it, “I could also feel the mounting anxiety with a deepening sense of helplessness in the people around me.”
I’m afraid that the rare bleeding condition in its psycho-emotional sense is now frequent and common among those who suffer. I’ve never seen in my life so many Jesuses surviving in the most stressful situations, and suffering from hematodisis of some sort—depressed, isolated, weeping and perspiring with mystical blood, and staring off at nothing. Everywhere they look, things look black, dark, and bleak, feeling so helpless. Hopeless.
But what should prevail in the hearts of those who suffer? May I respectfully suggest the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity?
First of all, Christian faith can remind us of God’s response to Jesus’ cry on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” which is the same loving response to us who now feel abandoned under the shadows of war, sickness and death. I tell you, God’s response is nothing less than awesome: JESUS is risen on the third day, hallelujah!
Remember, the first Easter marked the genesis of a whole new world, a new beginning of universal brotherhood and sisterhood, visible in a radically empowered community and changed attitudes. It was a joyful moment in human history when Christian faith, hope and charity spread rapidly—when no one was sad or hungry and when all were healed, both spiritually and physically.
It’s the kind of “faith that sees,” the oculata fides that recognises the Empty Tomb marking the triumph of God’s power over death and serving as an aide-mémoire of the victory of good over evil. Faith assures us that God can write straight with crooked lines because only God can turn the shameful cross of Christ into a perpetual symbol of salvation.
The second is Christian hope. Face to face with war, depression and a severe health crisis that leaves a colossal psycho-emotional scar and pushes humankind into a large-scale socio-political, spiritual emptiness, and economic catastrophe, there are two paths to choose: One that leads to despair on individual level [alcoholism, drugs, and suicide] and the other path that leads us to Christian hope—hope in the risen Lord.
We believe the Empty Tomb will make us see a silver lining behind every dark cloud and a light at the end of the tunnel. Hope is our attempt, always aided by God’s amazing grace, to bravely face all human difficulties, trusting that our God is bigger than all challenges and that he is the best solution to all problems.
And the third, but not the least, is Christian charity. Charity means to love God above all things and to love our neighbour as ourselves. During the global crisis, we witness a genuine demonstration of charity and self-sacrifice as practiced by frontliners, volunteers, and women and men of goodwill, who do their best for others, irrespective of the economic status or creed or gender of the people they serve.
Charity will make us do the same, that is, to give without counting the cost and without expecting anything in return. Charity will push us to reach out to the lost, the last, and the least, and make this world a bit better.
Remember, the first Easter marked the genesis of a whole new world, a new beginning of universal brotherhood and sisterhood, visible in a radically empowered community and changed attitudes. It was a joyful moment in human history when Christian faith, hope and charity spread rapidly—when no one was sad or hungry and when all were healed, both spiritually and physically.
Jose Mario Bautista Maximiano is a Manila-based Catholic scholar, public educator, management advisor, and the author of the Catholic Social Teachings in CONTEMPORARY Philippine History: 500 YOC [1971-2021], Volume Three [Claretian, 2022].
