 YOUR
KING IS COMING TO YOU …
Rejoice, you people of Zion,
Look, your king is coming to you!
He comes triumphant and victorious but humble and riding on a donkey
- on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
Zechariah 9:9
From the Editor of Madonna Magazine Andrew Bullen S.J.
Easter, again. Meaning there has to be Lent again, and the Passion
yet again. We have to go through all the suffering of Good Friday,
and the exhaustion and emptiness of Holy Saturday to reach the transformation
of all our distress into the joy of Easter Sunday.
This joy wasn’t easily won for the Lord, and so not for us
either. But thanks to his first Easter pilgrimage, through the mess
we humans have made of ourselves, our own journeys are turned into
the same pilgrimage and reach the same transformation. His love
easters in us.
This year, the Friday a week after Good Friday is Anzac Day. Maybe
that can be another good Friday, if we recall the sacrifice and
non-warlike spirit of the Anzacs. Especially those at Gallipoli.
Maybe that’s why we treasure the story of Simpson and his
donkey, bringing the wounded down through much danger to safety
and healing, ultimately at the cost of Simpson’s own life.
I don’t know what happened to the donkey.
Our cover shows Simpson’s donkey as painted by Martin Tighe.
There is something very vulnerable and tough about this donkey.
A donkey is part of the Holy Week story, because one carried Jesus
into Jerusalem on Passion (Palm) Sunday. The cross mark on its shoulders
has always told of the donkey’s sharing Jesus’ load.
In fact the donkey is the literal Christ-bearer or Christopher.
In Martin Tighe’s painting Simpson’s donkey is bandaged
across its wounded nose with the Red Cross and stands on the same
emblem. Poor thing. It touches something tender in us.
This donkey also looks like it’s holding its ground, as if
being a byword for stubbornness is very much to its credit. Here
is where it should be and it’s not going to budge.
The donkey has carried Jesus, carried the cross, and carried all
the wounded Simpson could find in the gullies of Gallipoli. In doing
all this, the poor tough creature has taken some flak.
Don’t we know people like this? In fact, what does it mean
if they are not like this? This is a very Christian donkey after
all. Carrying Jesus, being like Jesus, and in trouble because of
Jesus; that almost sums up what it is to be a Christian. Brought
to a holy and bleeding standstill by the Cross.
Presumably the donkey barely knows what is happening, and how many
people do we know who are like this? We know people who carry the
cross without knowing it, and, please God, experience something
of the resurrection without being able to call it that. Well, maybe
we are all like this at some time or other. I hope so.
God’s transforming grace is not stopped from working just
because it’s not being noticed. Maybe God admires our stubborn
endurance as well as pities our distress. And, with Jesus, joins
us in our donkeyhood.
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