Passion Wednesday: Leaning into Mercy

On walking lightly, resisting resistance and leaning into mercy.

Signs of hope in the back yard.

This is the fourth of our Passion Week Consolations 2025. You can find all posts here.
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Dear fellow pilgrim,

This morning I ventured outside to bring you these Spring greetings. How are you doing on this journey through passion week, dear friend? Have you picked your sign of hope yet?

I decided to pack my camera and just find some outdoors. In this season of lament nature is full of signs of hope. Nature calls to us to see them. And I almost missed these first Spring bloomers looking elsewhere.

Isn’t this how we often travel? We have our thoughts elsewhere and miss what is right in front of us?

So today I want to invite you to walk lightly, to look and see, listen and hear, and to take in the consolation both nature and Bach’s music offer us in their powerful display of new beginnings from utter bareness.

And if you wish to share a more sensual sign of hope with us, I just opened a private chat window for our journey, where you can leave a photo, drawing, link or poem also. I will leave some more Spring bloomers there for you :-)

Resisting Resistance

As you know I am a rather reluctant traveler through passion week. I know that the church season and its symbolism has great value for the movement of our souls and deepening our personal journey.

But I am also reluctant to go on a pilgrimage which will surely put another crack in my heart and some burden on my days.

Who would not?

Resistance is actually a quite natural and important marker in our soul life. So much so that I speak with clients and mentees about it as we start our consultations. We have all been successful in building walls around our heart. It is not easy to leap over them.

And they are important also. They protect us.

Thus resistance. It shows that there may be pain ahead, pain we would rather avoid, if we go deeper into some inner refection.

And, it is sometimes difficult to understand when it is time to respect our resistance and let it lead the way and when it is time to leap over, or to sneak past it.

Overcoming resistance, dear friend, does not mean to drive in with a bulldozer to take down the walls around your heart.

It also does not mean to dwell in our pain.

It actually means to walk lightly with our sorrows. And to hold them into Divine Mercy.

Bach also knows this. And so he shapes his music as a seduction, as a gentle prying open of the gaps in the walls. Bach’s music finds those little cracks in the wall and lets the light of the eternal stream in.

Bach’s music, then, is the therapy, the balm for our burdened souls, the seductive curve that beckons us along the path. The music becomes a mediator between the mercy God offers and our heart. Passion week, and Bach’s Passion as its emissary, become the path through our troubles towards healing and new life.

Thus, resisting resistance simply means not to give up when it gets difficult. It means the wisdom of the pilgrim to continue the pilgrimage also when the feet hurt. Resistance most often shows up with inertia, the stubborn refusal to even just begin. So if you feel put off by the lyrics, or reluctant to follow the movement into sorrow, then welcome your resistance, be mindful when it shows up.

In the silent hours, says KIERKEGAARD, when we sit alone with our sorrows, the Divine teacher enters. Notice, it is when we sit with our sorrows, when we do something with them, when we look at them gently, when we are no longer afraid of them or despair over them, but embrace them in a dance.

This is when spiritual freedom enters and transcendence breaks in.

Let us then weep together, let us listen together, let us beg for mercy together, and let the music and dance bear our sorrows and move us to the depths of our soul.

With love, Almut

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Listening Practice: Leaning into Mercy

"Erbarme dich" de La Pasión según San Mateo BWV 244 de Bach por Nathalie Stutzmann y Orfeo 55

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When I was scrolling our Passion Week archives. One Aria and interpretation stood out to me. French contralto and conductor Nathalie Stutzmann’s interpretation of the beloved Aria “Erbarme Dich” – literally translated “have pity on me”, always moves me to tears. She embodies every word in her gesture and facial expression, even while conducting her own orchestra.

It is like a warm balm to the soul of the weary pilgrim. How she ends her interpretation, with two seconds of exhaustion and consolation mingling in her expression offered me reprieve today from my sorrows.

Bach’s aria “Erbarme Dich” in his St Matthew Passion is probably the most famous and beloved of the arias. How can a song which begs for mercy even be described as beautiful or beloved? It is because the weaving of music and word offers us a vehicle to hold our deeper emotions without getting lost in them.

Instead the movement goes towards integration, not dissociation. It appeals to and integrates all our senses, it is the therapy against our fragmentation, when we are overwhelmed and fall apart, get lost or swept away.

Thus, Bach’s Passion is also therapy for those like me, who sometimes feel they drown in the deep emotions we harbor about our own state and the whole world. As you will see, the Aria expresses the emotion, but it is not driven by it. This subtle difference makes all the difference.

Listening Suggestions and Journaling Questions