A Pondering for Holy Week

As we enter Holy Week, how do we let the mystery of the Incarnation shape us?
It wasn't that long ago (liturgical calendar speaking) that we were all celebrating the Incarnation at Christmas. How do we keep incarnationally focused during this week? What does the incarnation shape us into, shape our priorities, or relationships with others and the world around us?

Ilia Delio writes:

An incarnational bias is evident today in our globalized culture. The "problem" of immigrants, welfare recipients, incarcerated, mentally ill, . . . disabled, and all who are marginalized by mainstream society, is a problem of the incarnation. When we reject our relatedness to the poor, the weak, the simple, and the unlovable we define the family of creation over and against God. In place of God we decide who is worthy of our attention and who can be rejected. Because of our deep fears, we spend time, attention, and money on preserving our boundaries of privacy and increasing our knowledge and power. We hermetically seal ourselves off from the undesired "other," the stranger, and in doing so, we seal ourselves off from God. By rejecting God in the neighbor, we reject the love that can heal us.
Until we come to accept created reality with all its limits and pains as the living presence of God, Christianity has nothing to offer to the world. It is sound bites of empty promises. When we lose the priority of God's love in weak, fragile humanity, we lose the Christ, the foundation on which we stand as Christians.
Compassion continues the Incarnation by allowing the Word of God to take root within us, to be enfleshed in us. The Incarnation is not finished; it is not yet complete for it is to be completed in us. [1]

As we enter this Holy Week, may we continue to be shaped by the God who comes walking alongside us.

Blessed be,
Joel

************
Reference:
[1] Ilia Delio, Compassion: Living in the Spirit of St. Francis, (Franciscan Media: 2011), 61.