A Holy Week

The Palm Sunday liturgy takes us from Jesus’ triumphant procession into Jerusalem to his ignominious burial.   In less than a week, the crowd has turned.  Jesus, proclaimed the prophet and the son of David on Sunday, is humiliated, scourged, crucified and buried on Friday.  We shake our heads and wonder how the tide could turn so quickly.

Yet, in our own lives, we can re-live this transformation most every week.  We gather on Sunday at Mass to sing joyful songs, to pray together, to celebrate and remember Jesus’ passion for us, and, most of important of all, to be strengthened by Jesus himself in the Eucharist.

Then we leave the assembly and fall back into our busy, daily routines.  We forget.  Oh, perhaps we don’t forget as much as we become distracted.  We depend on our own hard work to accomplish our many duties.  We pride ourselves on our own efforts.  We may become frustrated when we fail, but we’re determined to work harder to overcome the failure.

And in our busyness, we push Jesus out of our lives, just as surely as the unfaithful ones plotted to eliminate Jesus from their lives by having him crucified.  But He waits for us still.  The tomb is but a temporary stop, He rises again to enter our lives, if only we remember to make room.

The Holy Week liturgies are an opportunity to break out of routine, to go on a retreat of sorts that lets us dwell on the true source of peace in our world today – the salvation that Jesus won for us on the cross.

Our retreat can begin on Tuesday evening, where, at each parish in the diocese, the sacrament of Reconciliation is available.  As we reflect on God’s great love for us, we accept his merciful forgiveness in this sacrament and are welcomed into his arms as the Prodigal Son was welcomed by his father.

On Spy Wednesday, we gather at Mass and listen as Judas sets those fateful days in motion with his nefarious deal.  Perhaps we are reminded of times we traded our devotion to Jesus for what seemed more important and valuable, but which turned out to be mere dross.

No morning Mass on Thursday, but we gather at our normal Mass times and pray the Liturgy of the Hours with the universal Church.  On Holy Thursday night, we gather for the Mass of the Last Supper, re-creating Jesus’ call for us to be servants to all, followed by our own Garden of Gethsemane as we pray before and with Jesus himself in the consecrated host.

On Good Friday, Morning Prayer at 6:45 or 9:00, the Stations of the Cross at noon and the and the Veneration of the Cross at 3:00 allow us to meditate deeply on the Jesus’ death, suffering the betrayal of his friends in silence, courageously accepting the judgment of death against him, and loving his enemies to the end as he prays for them on the cross.  Finally, we walk again with Jesus along the Via Dolorosa, the Way of Tears, as we pray the Stations of the Cross at 7:30.

Holy Saturday is quiet time, a time for prayer, with more time for Reconciliation if we missed it earlier in Lent.   But at sundown, our celebration of Easter begins in earnest with the Vigil Mass.  We celebrate the light of the world coming into our lives, we rejoice in Jesus’ resurrection that breaks the chains of death, and we welcome into our family those who now share our faith in the Risen Lord.

At the break of dawn on Sunday, we celebrate Mass at sunrise – 6:00 for us here at St. Rose.  We remember the wonder and awe those first women felt when they approached the tomb that first Easter morning,   Like those first disciples, we feel a chill up our spine not only by the cool of the early morning but by the sense that the divine has broken into our mundane lives and transformed the world into something new.

I invite each of you to break from the daily routines that can so insidiously draw us away from the source or our salvation.  Come celebrate together as we enter into the Passion, the death, and the glorious resurrection of our Lord and Savior.

Have a most holy week!