Palm Sunday Mass is famous for its longevity. The Gospel reading covers the entire story of Jesus' last supper, trial, crucifixion and death. My favorite scene (I know an odd thing to say) is when Jesus asks the disciples to stay awake with him while he prays in the Garden of Gethsemane, and they keep falling asleep.

The interpretation is often that the disciples were so lame they couldn't even do one favor for their leader. But as I age, I am more taken with this spin: Sometimes, in our deepest suffering, we are really alone and must face it alone.

In his weekly column, spiritual writer Ron Rolheiser touched on the very theme. Here's an excerpt;

Several years ago, I was visiting a man dying of cancer in a hospital room. He was dying well, though nobody dies easy. He felt a deep loneliness, even as he was surrounded by people who loved him deeply.  Here’s how he described it: “I have a wonderful wife and children, and lots of family and friends. Someone is holding my hand almost every minute, but … I’m a stone’s throw away from everyone. I’m dying and they’re not. I’m inside of something into which they can’t reach. It’s awfully lonely, dying.”

He had borrowed his salient phrase from Luke’s Gospel where we are told that on the night before his death Jesus went to the Garden of Gethsemane with his disciples. There he invited them to pray with him as he struggled to find strength to face his death; but, as Luke cryptically adds, while he sweated blood, he was “a stone’s throw away” from them.

How far is a stone’s throw? It’s distance enough to leave you in a place where no one can reach you. Just as we come out of the womb alone we leave this earth alone. Jesus, like the man whom I just described, also faced his death knowing that he was loved by others but also knowing that in the face of death he was entering a place where he was deeply and utterly alone.

And this emphasis on aloneness is in fact one of the major points within the Passion narratives. In describing Jesus’ death, perhaps more than anything else, the Gospels want us to focus in on his aloneness, his abandonment, his being a stone’s throw away from everyone. 

(Cristo Cana de Mais," a rare crucifix made of corn pitch and orchid resin, was on exhibit at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture a few years ago. Photo from S-R archives)
 

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