LIVE HOLY WEEK WELL
HOLY WEEK
Wishing you a blessed Holy Week as Our Lord takes us deeper into his Paschal Mystery!
Below are several resources for you to help make this a great Holy Week
Holy Week, the most important week of the liturgical year, is upon us. To help us prepare, here are some of the ways we can orient our hearts to this most holy season.
Please know that regardless of how well (or poorly) you have maintained your Lenten commitments, it’s not too late to live this week well. Matthew 20:1-16, Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, tells us that God’s grace is available to everyone – even though none of us are deserving.
Suggestions for entering into Holy Week:
Get to confession.
Learn about and participate in the liturgy of Holy Week (see The Liturgy of Holy Week: Entering the Paschal Mystery below and participate in your parish Holy Week liturgies). Schedule liturgical activities ahead of time. Don’t try to squeeze Holy Week events around your regular activities.
Use good meditation materials - Scroll down for possible images, videos, articles and more for you to use to choose from for meditation material. The goal is not to read them all but to select one or two to use as a springboard to prayer.
Stations of the Cross – remember our own participation in His suffering. Recommend versions by St. Alphonsus Liguori or St. Francis of Assisi. Consider doing stations on Good Friday at 3:00 PM
Watch Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ.
Meditation Materials for Holy Week
Holy Week is so much more than just play-acting or remembering an Historical Event - The Liturgy of Holy Week is Our Access Point into this Mystery!
It is important to remember that we are not simply remembering what Christ did: the ceremonies of Holy Week, and especially the three great days of the Triduum, are not just memory-joggers or ritual re-enactments of the events of our salvation. There is a mysterious unity between what Christ did 2000 years ago and what we do on these days. Read article below "The Liturgy of Holy Week: Entering the Paschal Mystery" to learn about this incredible mystery!
My Life and the Stations of the Cross:
14 Moments with Jesus (Infographic)
Praying the Stations of the Cross is a devotion centered on the main events of the Passion of our Lord. If you have not yet done the Stations during the Fridays of Lent, we encourage you to take the opportunity on Good Friday. In fact, I dare say that we can identify (clearly to a lesser extent) with many of the feelings and experiences of the Lord on his way to Calvary: pain, betrayal, loneliness, falls, comfort, help, etc. .
St. Josemaria Escriva talks about this in some of his meditations on the stations of the Cross. He helps us to understand the feelings of Jesus during his Passion and apply them to our daily lives.
“Do you to know how to thank Our Lord for all he has done for us?… With love! There is no other way. Love is with love repaid. But the real proof of affection is given by sacrifice. So, take courage!: deny yourself and take up his Cross. Then you will be sure you are returning him love for Love.” (The Way of the Cross)
We invite you and everyone to be a part of this mystery of love, see the infographic below with some reflections based on the meditations of St. Josemaria. We hope that it will help you walk with the Lord to the cross and to prepare your heart for Easter!
AN ANCIENT HOMILY ON HOLY SATURDAY - VIDEO
“[He] suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into Hell…” (Apostles’ Creed)
This moving video presentation was created by Theophilus Peregrinus from An Ancient Homily on Holy Saturday, and is used here with permission. This is the Second Reading for the Office of Readings for Holy Saturday found in the Liturgy of the Hours today.
Something strange is happening – there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear. He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep …
Pray "Christ's Way of the Cross" (below) with Mary
Mary, my Mother, you were the first to live the Way of the Cross.
You felt every pain and every humiliation. You were unafraid of the ridicule heaped upon you by the crowds. Your eyes were ever on Jesus and his pain. Is that the secret of your miraculous strength? How did your loving heart bear such a burden and such a weight? As you watched him stumble and fall, were you tortured by the memory of all the yesterdays — his birth, his hidden life and his ministry?
You were so desirous of everyone loving him. What a heartache it was to see so many hate him — hate with a diabolical fury.
Take my hand as I make this Way of the Cross. Inspire me with those thoughts that will make me realize how much he loves me.
Give me light to apply each station to my daily life and to remember my neighbor’s needs in this “Way of Pain.”
Obtain for me the grace to understand the mystery, the wisdom and the Divine love as I go from scene to scene. Grant that my heart, like yours, may be pierced through by the sight of his sorrow and the misery and that I may determine never to offend him again. What a price he paid to cover my sins, to open the gates of heaven for me and to fill my soul with his own Spirit.
Sweet Mother, let us travel this way together, and grant that the love in my poor heart may give you some slight consolation. Amen.
The Victory of Humility
When a conquering hero of the ancient world rode into town in triumph, it was in a regal chariot or on the back of a stately stallion. Legions of soldiers accompanied him in the victory procession. Triumphal arches, festooned with relief sculptures, were often erected to immortalize his valiant victory.
After driving out demons, healing the sick, and raising the dead, it was time for the King of Kings to enter the Holy City. But to do so, he rode not on the back of a warhorse, but a donkey. His companions accompanied him brandishing not swords, but palm branches. The monument to his victory, erected a week later, was not an arch, but a crucifix.
His earthly beginning was frightfully humble. And his earthly end would be no different. The wood of the manger prefigured the wood of the cross.
From beginning to end, the details are humiliating. No room in the inn. Born amidst the stench of a stable. Hunted by Herod’s henchmen. Growing up in a far-flung province of the Roman Empire–Galilee, the land where the country accent is so thick, you can cut it with a knife. How was it that the high priest’s servant-girl knew that Peter was a disciple of Jesus? His hillbilly accent gave him away (Mat 26:73). Jesus disciples were not cultured, learned men of ability. They were drawn from the low-life of a backwater region.
When one of his closest companions offered to betray him, he did not require millions. Jesus’ worth was reckoned to be no more than the Old Testament “book value” for a slave–thirty pieces of silver (Ex 21:32). When he was finally handed over to the Romans, he was not given the punishment meted out to Roman citizens. Beheading was the quick, dignified way to execute someone of any standing. Instead Jesus was given punishments reserved only for slaves and rebellious members of subjugated peoples – flagellation and crucifixion. These two penalties were not just about the pain, but about the humiliation. In first century Palestine, men and women typically covered themselves from head to toe, even in the scorching heat. A crucified man was stripped naked and put on display for all to see.
But this is not primary a story of violence and humiliation. The events of Holy Week are much more about love and humility.
That’s why on Passion Sunday we read the powerful words of Paul’s letter from the Philippians (2:6-11). Though the Divine Word was God, dwelling in the serene heights of heavenly glory, he freely plunged to the depths of human misery, joining himself to our frail nature, entering into our turbulent world. As if this act of humility were not enough, he further humbled himself, accepting the status of a slave. His act of stooping down to wash the feet of his disciples (Jn 13) was a parable of his whole human existence, for this act was regarded as so undignified that not even Israelite slaves could be compelled to do it.
But that’s just it. Jesus was not compelled to do it. He willingly lowered himself in his birth, in his ministry, in his death. No one took his life from him. He freely laid down his own life (Jn 10:18). Others did not have the chance to humble him; he humbled himself.
It had to be so. The Second Adam had to undo the damage caused by the first. What was the sin our first parents? They disobeyed because they wanted to know what God knew, to be like God, to exalt themselves over God (Gen 3). They were bitten by the Serpent, and injected with the deadly venom of Pride. The antidote, the anti-venom could only be humility. The foot-washing, donkey-riding New Adam would crush the head of the deadly serpent by means of loving, humble obedience.
The first-born of many brothers lowered himself to the dust from which the First Adam has been made–indeed humility comes from the word “humus.” But God responded to his humility by exalting him far above Caesars, kings, and even Hollywood stars. And he invites us to share his glory with him. But first we must walk on his road to glory, the royal road of the cross.
Dr. Marcellino D’Ambrosio writes from Texas. For info on his resources and pilgrimages to Rome and the Holy Land, visit www.crossroadsinitiative.com or call 800.803.0118.
Praying through Holy Week
Fr. Mike Schmitz tell us how to make the coming week spiritually rich, using a method of some Franciscan nuns
How do we make Holy Week distinct and special from all other weeks, when it comes to prayer? Fr. Mike Schmitz lets us in on an approach we can take to Holy Week — it’s the way the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist in Duluth do it. As we begin to walk with Jesus from his entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, to Calvary, and then to the resurrection, this unique way of praying can help us enter into Holy Week more deeply.
The Importance of Renewing Our Baptismal Vows at Easter
For most of us—with the exception of some converts—baptism is a sacrament most of us never remember experiencing.
Baptism is a crucially important sacrament. It’s the only sacrament mentioned explicitly in the Nicene Creed. Christ’s specially appointed forerunner was John the Baptist. And the first thing Christ did in His public ministry was get baptized.
For us, baptism washes away the guilt of original sin. It enrolls us in membership in the Church. St. Paul tells us it is a participation in the death and burial of Christ (Romans 6:4; Colossians 2:12). The catechism elaborates:
Baptism not only purifies from all sins, but also makes the neophyte ‘a new creature,’ an adopted son of God, who has become a ‘partaker of the divine nature,’ member of Christ and co-heir with him, and a temple of the Holy Spirit.
The solemn significance of baptism is underscored by the fact that it can only be done once and is irreversible. As the catechism puts it,
Incorporated into Christ by Baptism, the person baptized is configured to Christ. Baptism seals the Christian with the indelible spiritual mark (character) of his belonging to Christ. No sin can erase this mark, even if sin prevents Baptism from bearing the fruits of salvation. Given once for all, Baptism cannot be repeated.
When the majority of us were baptized we were not only too young to not only to fail to appreciate it but even to remember it. This is why the renewal of our baptismal vows at Easter—usually at the Easter vigil or the Easter Sunday Mass—is so important. It is the one time of year that is specially devoted to recalling our baptism.
Many of us may not realize it, but in many ways this is what our entire Lenten journey has been pointing towards. Every third year, in the readings for the first Sunday of Lent, we are reminded of this by the Old Testament reading, taken from Genesis 9, which describes Noah’s flood. (We most recently had this reading in 2015.)
The flood account might seem an odd pairing for Lent. Isn’t the desert—the setting for Jesus temptation, which, in turn, recalled the wandering of the Israelites in the desert—the overriding motif for Lent? Certainly it is.
And yet, the flood account is relevant because of the importance of baptism for the Passion. Remember, as St. Paul explained, it is in baptism that we are buried with Christ, so that we might be assured of resurrection with Him. As Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Vatican II constitution on the liturgy, puts it, “Thus by baptism men are plunged into the paschal mystery of Christ: they die with Him, are buried with Him, and rise with Him.”
That statement actually contains an illuminating pun in stating that we are ‘plunged’ into the paschal mystery. Plunge is one of the original meanings of the Greek word baptizo, which has been transliterated into our English word. Is this not what Lent has been building up to? Indeed, during this season we have been preparing ourselves to ‘take the plunge,’ so to speak, with Christ on the cross.
The account of the crucifixion in John 19 confirms this connection, where we see blood and water flowing out of the side of Christ—symbolizing the baptismal waters and the Eucharistic wine, thereby effectively giving birth to the Church.
Here’s where the flood comes into the picture. Recall that the flood waters were sent as punishment in Genesis. But Christ has taken the punishment upon use, transforming what was a symbol of condemnation into one of salvation. And so, at the start of Lent, the Genesis account of the flood reminds us that the desert in which we wander will be consumed in a flood of grace (as one of my local pastors once explained in a homily).
This kind of imagery fits in with Old Testament prophecy. As Isaiah 41:18-19 puts it,
I will open up rivers on the bare heights,
and fountains in the broad valleys;
I will turn the wilderness into a marshland,
and the dry ground into springs of water.
In the wilderness I will plant the cedar,
acacia, myrtle, and olive;
In the wasteland I will set the cypress,
together with the plane tree and the pine,
And likewise, Isaiah 43:19,
See, I am doing something new!
Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
In the wilderness I make a way,
in the wasteland, rivers.
The flood and water imagery is not actually opposed to that of the desert. Rather, it complements it. In a sense, we are called to follow Christ in reverse order during Lent: He was baptized in the Jordan then went out into the desert. We, on the other hand, fight our temptations during Lent in order that we might cross the Jordan. (This does actually follow the sequence of the exodus account: for Israel the wandering in the desert ended with the crossing of the Jordan and then then entrance into the Promised Land.)
There is so much that happens over Easter Weekend. The vigil alone is overwhelming in its beauty, mystery, and spiritual power. It can become easy to overlook or miss out on some of the elements of the liturgy, whether at night or the next day. This year, make sure the renewal of your baptismal vows isn’t one of them. It’s not just a critically important part of the liturgy. In a way, it’s the whole point of our Lenten journey.