Living into Holy Week
Another Glimpse of My Life
In God Is on the Cross: Reflections on Lent and Easter, Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes that “the law of Christ is a law of bearing. Bearing means forbearing and sustaining.” As I sat with his reflection on the disciples learning to forbear, something in me awakened. It clarified what daily dwelling with God, what we often call prayer, contemplation, and meditation in the Spirit, is about.
Bonhoeffer describes how Jesus prepares the disciples for the cross: Before the disciples gather around the cross, Jesus clearly reveals himself as the Lord of the Kingdom of God, the glory of God. Before the disciples descend with Jesus into the abyss of human guilt, evil, and hate, Jesus leads them to a high mountain, from which their help comes (Ps. 121:1). The disciples go to the cross with the knowledge of resurrection. With this knowledge, we are supposed to be able to bear the cross.
These words reframed prayer for me. Prayer is not an escape. It is preparation. It is the intimate connection with God that strengthens us to face whatever the day brings. As I read Bonhoeffer, I found myself recalling an experience that has quietly shaped my entire life, one I did not recognize as formative until much later. Just as the disciples did not yet understand how their time with Jesus would enable them to bear the cross, I did not understand what God was forming in me.
A Childhood Wound, a Surprising Grace
Growing up, I was bullied because of my birth deformity, no right ear, and facial disfigurement. I have since learned that throughout history, children with facial differences were often shunned, hidden, or even killed. I was not killed, but I knew the sting of rejection. I knew what it felt like to be stared at, avoided, or mocked.
Two boys in particular made my life miserable. They beat me up while other students watched. The shame of that moment still echoes. My mother insisted I speak with our Episcopal priest. I did not expect much. He offered an image I had never considered: a cloud of witnesses surrounding me. He pointed to scenes in Scripture where heaven opens, and the unseen realm becomes visible, Elijah’s servant whose eyes are opened to see the hills filled with horses and chariots of fire, and the great cloud of witnesses in Hebrews who surround us as we run the race set before us. Father Russell said, “When those boys stand in front of you, the witnesses of heaven stand behind you and around you. You are not alone.”
Years later, when I shared this encounter with Father Russell with a friend, he said the image did nothing for him. Perhaps it does not do much for everyone. But for me, it was as if something in my soul clicked into place. I walked out of that office with a new imagination, not fantasy, but a deeper truth. I was held. I was accompanied. I was not abandoned to the cruelty of others.
I do not remember being bullied by those two boys after that. The rejection and shunning did not magically disappear, but something inside me had shifted. A quiet strength emerged, not defiance, not bravado, but a groundedness. A freedom. A sense that I could stand, even when others turned away.
Looking back now with more spiritual discernment, I realize that this was my first experience of what Bonhoeffer describes: God preparing us on the mountain so we can endure the valley. The disciples did not know how the radiance of Christ on the mountaintop would sustain them at the cross. I did not know how a simple pastoral conversation would become a lifelong anchor. But God knew. I began to understand the importance of dwelling with God during intentional times each day and in the daily routines of life.
Holy Week as Preparation, Not Performance
As I reflect on Holy Week, I am struck by how Jesus spends these days preparing his disciples, not for religious observance, but for reality. For suffering. For confusion. For the long stretch of silence between Good Friday and Easter morning.
Holy Week is not merely a remembrance of events long past. It is an invitation to dwell with God in such a way that we are strengthened to live through our own crosses, the ones we did not choose, the ones that come through rejection, loss, misunderstanding, or the slow ache of being human.
Daily prayer, contemplation, and quiet dwelling with God are not luxuries. They are the mountains where we glimpse the radiance of Christ so that, when the shadows lengthen, we are not undone.
Perhaps Holy Week is less about reenacting the drama and more about receiving the same preparation the disciples received: to see Christ’s glory before we face the world’s cruelty, to remember resurrection before we encounter death, and to be held by God before we are wounded by others.
To live into Holy Week is to let God strengthen the inner life so that we can bear outer realities. It is to let the presence of Christ, dazzling, steady, and near, shape us into people who can walk through suffering without losing hope. And maybe, just maybe, it is to remember that even when we stand before our own bullies, our own fears, our own crosses, we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. We are not alone.
