Holy Week Questions

FIRST READING

• This reading comes from one of the Suffering Servant Songs in Isaiah, which personify the sufferings of the people of Israel into a description of a “suffering servant,” who ultimately is realized in the person of Jesus Christ. Imagine you are an Israelite in Exile and listen to these words. How do they make you feel?
• The Suffering Servant sets his face like flint toward the sufferings of the world, trusting in God as his help. Has your experience of fasting throughout this Lent helped you to set your face like flint toward God?
• In the school of suffering, we learn how to “speak to the weary a word that will rouse them.” If someone asked you for an encouraging word in the midst of suffering, what would you say?

• Paul emphasizes that Jesus freely chose to take on flesh and come to us in human likeness, a choice that he knew would result in his own suffering and death. What do you think of the idea that the Son of God freely chose to suffer for you?
• Paul describes Jesus’ Incarnation as a self-emptying, or a “kenosis” in Greek. How has your experience of fasting led to any sense of self-emptying?
• Jesus’ self-emptying led to being filled with the glory of the Father, “that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth.” What do you hope will fill your own self-emptied practice of fasting? What are you hungry for?

• Alexander Schmemann writes with rich, theological language about the spiritual and liturgical dimensions of fasting. What ideas jumped out to you while reading his thoughts?
• Schmemann compares Adam’s eating of the forbidden fruit to Christ’s fasting in the desert, connecting Christ’s fast to our own discipline of fasting. What other connections do you see between Adam, Christ, and yourself?
• Ultimately, he concludes that fasting is the way in which we are transformed into God’s image, and that to fast is to participate in the process of becoming hungry for God. As we approach the overwhelming Paschal joy of Easter, do you feel hungry for God? How can you continue to cultivate this hunger, even after your Lenten fast has ended?