Tuesday of Holy Week

On Tuesday of Holy Week we hear the second “servant song” from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. We can imagine the young man Jesus pondering these words during those “silent years” before his public ministry.

He must have wondered, as most young people do, if his life was too uneventful:

He made of me a sharp-edged sword
and concealed me in the shadow of his arm.
He made me a polished arrow,
in his quiver he hid me.

Several years later, we can only imagine his inner trial as he suffered his last hours. Even then the scriptures would occupy his mind. But was it filled with divine assurance, based on the reassuring texts of the Bible; or troubled by the anguish of Job, the complaints of Jeremiah, or the laments of the psalms:

… I thought I had toiled in vain,
and for nothing, uselessly, spent my strength?

Whatever thoughts were aroused by his torment – the same thoughts we experience during difficult hours – he surely pushed through them to the consolation he knew in prayer:

You are my servant, he said to me,
Israel, through whom I show my glory.
Yet my reward is with the Lord,
my recompense is with my God.

As we approach Saint John’s passion narrative, which we always read on Good Friday, we should pay attention to these words about glory.
Scriptures scholars call it Johanine irony. Johanine is an adjective meaning “something typical of John,” in this case, The Gospel of Saint John. Irony usually means something amusing but not in this case. It describes the contrast between what the bystanders saw on Calvary and what the faithful see. They see a man nailed to a cruel instrument of death; we see our king upon his throne. They see a man with thorns penetrating his scalp; we see a beautiful crown. They see two thieves on his right and left; we see a king with his courtiers. They mock him with “Hail, King of the Jews” and we kneel before him because he is our king. They see ignominy and shame; we see glory.
Indeed we would not recognize our Lord and Messiah if he were covered in the glitz and bling of this world. Saint John uses irony to help us see clearly what the eyes of our flesh and feelings and ordinary expectations cannot imagine: that God reveals himself perfectly on the cross, and there is no other way to know him.
As Judas leaves the Cenacle, Jesus announces,

“Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.
If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself,
and he will glorify him at once.