Holy Week

Let Us Resolve to Make This Week Holy…

Dear brothers and sisters, with Palm Sunday we enter the Holy Week. It is a solemn week of extra prayer and fasting. It involves the Triduum: Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil. During those three days we recall—and through our prayer participate in—Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples, his arrest, trial, and execution, the long day of silence (Holy Saturday) while his body rested in the grave, and his Resurrection on Easter.

I would like to share with you some thoughts from Ignatian spirituality and by Sr. Thea Bowmann FSPA which would help us to make this week Holy.

Let us resolve to make this week holy by reading and meditating with the Holy Scripture. So often we get caught up in the hurry of daily living. As individuals and as families, reserve prime time to be with Jesus, to hear the cries of the children waving palm branches, to see the Son of Man riding on an ass’ colt, to feel the press of the crowd, to be caught up in the “Hosannas” and to realize how the cries of acclamation will yield to the garden of suffering, to be there and watch as Jesus is sentenced by Pilate to Calvary, to see him rejected, mocked, spat upon, beaten, and forced to carry a heavy cross, to hear the echo of the hammer, to feel the agony of torn flesh and strained muscles, to know Mary’s anguish as he hung three hours before he died.

We recoil before the atrocities of war, gang crime, domestic violence, and catastrophic illness.  Let us take time this week to be present to someone who suffers. Sharing the pain of a fellow human will enliven Scripture and help us enter the holy mystery of the redemptive suffering of Christ.

Let us resolve to make this week holy by participating in the Holy Week services of the church, not just by attending, but also by preparing, by studying the readings, entering into the spirit, offering our services as ministers of the Word or Eucharist, decorating the church, or preparing the environment for worship.

Let us sing, “Lord, have mercy,” and “Hosanna.” Let us praise the Lord with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength, uniting with the suffering church throughout the world. Let us break bread together, let us relive the holy and redemptive mystery. Let us do it in memory of Him acknowledging in faith his real presence upon our altars.

Let us resolve to make this week holy by sharing holy peace and joy within our families, with the needy, the alienated, the lonely, the sick and afflicted, the untouchable. Let us unite our sufferings, inconveniences, and annoyances with the sufferings of Jesus. During this Holy Week, when Jesus gave his life for love, let us truly love one another.  Have a Blessed Holy Week.

Fr. John Samuel