One purpose of Holy Week in the Church is to help us reflect carefully on the redemptive sufferings of Christ. By walking with Christ through the last days of his earthly life, we can grow in compassion by experiencing empathy with the rich emotional journey he took from exaltation on Palm Sunday through the utter sense of abandonment on the Cross.
One of the hallmarks of selfishness is the inability to enter into the reality of other people. "That's not my problem," is a red flag that we may have failed to heed Jesus teaching about true compassion. Empathy is the gateway to selflessness. It is the beginning of mercy. It is the basis of the incarnation: that Jesus did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at . . .
Being made in God's image, it is in our nature to be merciful. We need to cultivate a true empathy, i.e., to be able to feel with another what he or she is undergoing. This brings us back to Holy Week - a time to reflect on Christ's empathy for us as he "suffered with" and thus redeemed our sufferings.
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