Finally, we made it. The wait is over, and it has arrived. It is Holy Week, the holiest of all the weeks in the Church calendar. We anticipate it. We look ahead to it. We hope for it. But, are we ready for it?
With all the build up, there is no reason we should be unaware or unprepared. Yet some of us will still claim, that somehow we did not see the imminent arrival of Holy Week coming. Truth be told, it has been foreshadowed since the first chapters of the Gospel of Luke, and since the first pages of the Bible itself.
In the opening procession of Palm Sunday Mass, which begins Holy Week, the crowds cheered Jesus’ joyful entry into Jerusalem by proclaiming “glory in the highest” (Luke 19:38). This echoed the choirs of angels who, with similar ovations, pronounced Jesus’ jubilant entrance into our world at his birth (Luke 2:14). Furthermore, the appearance of an angel to Jesus during his passion at the Mount of Olives, and likewise to Mary before Jesus’ conception at Nazareth, again highlights how Christ’s trials of Holy Week are connected and suggested from the very beginning of Luke’s Gospel.
Even prior to the evangelist, the images of Holy Week are reflected all the way back to Genesis Chapter 2, with human beings banned from the paradise of the garden because of sin. Once more, we are able to recognize the link to the Palm Sunday Gospel, when we hear Jesus promise paradise to the penitent thief, and sin is finally conquered.
While it is possible, we may have missed these aforementioned prefigures that alerted us to the onset of Holy Week. Hopefully, our actions during the season of Lent leading up to this holy time, helped to prepare us. After all, our fasting was meant to enable us to drop a few of the excesses and clutter from our lives, and not merely to drop a few extra pounds from our waist. Our almsgiving should have attempted to fill the void of someone else, instead of filling our ego with a sense of self-importance. Our prayer was intended to draw us closer to Christ, rather than being something we discontinue as soon as Holy Week is over, and we have crossed it off our calendars.
This is because Holy Week is centered on the cross. These disciplines we have been practicing these forty days, were to become regular practices and parts of our daily existence. Forty represents newness and change, such as when God created a new covenant with Noah after forty days of rain, or when Jesus began his ministry after forty days in the desert. We too are supposed to be made new, after these forty days of Lenten trials.
It is our newness, our change, our transformation that signifies whether we are really ready for Holy Week. Being ready means being different than we were before before Lent. We should have been dying to the sinfulness and wickedness of our lives during these weeks of Lent, so we could be born again in God’s glory and mercy during these holiest of days.
Holy Week concludes with the Easter Vigil, where the Scriptures declare Jesus resurrected. He is no longer trapped in the tomb, having risen victoriously over this place of death. We are to follow his example and free ourselves from what binds us. We are to step out of the darkness of our lives, and walk with Christ into the light of the new day. We are to walk out into the world to spread the Good News with our words and with our actions.
This is Holy Week. It is now here. Are we ready for it?
For additional reading and reflections on Holy Week, click on the following links:
RCL Benziger mediation booklets, Lent, Year C
RCL Benziger’s resource “Take Up Your Cross”
USCCB March 26, 2016 Bible Reading
Scott Mussari is the Director of Faith Formation at St. Columban Church in Loveland, Ohio and can be reached at smussari@stcolumban.org.
The Easter season speaks new life to us in so many ways. Here in the Midwest, where I live, pansies and crocuses are blooming, seedlings are flourishing, gardeners are preparing the soil for the spring planting, the sun is shining, and joy is in the air.
Joy is in the air! For the People of God it sparks as the fire is lit in the dark of our most holy night, as the story of our ancestors in faith is told, and as the abundant waters of Baptism are poured. Joy is in the air in the sweet fragrance of Sacred Chrism, and as we take our place in the magnificent procession to the Table of the Lord where we say with faith and hope renewed, “Amen!” We believe!
Joy is in the air as we sing again, with full voice, on-key and off-key, our Easter Alleluias and the hymns that define the season and remind us of what has happened in history, and in our midst today. Alleluia! Alleluia! Let the holy anthem rise! Jesus Christ is risen today! I know that my Redeemer lives! ¡Resucitó! This is a day of new beginnings!
Joy is in the air, and we need to take time to savor, celebrate, appreciate, and cultivate this Fruit of the Spirit in our lives. The Universal Norms on the Liturgical Year and the General Roman Calendar remind us that the Great Fifty Days, from Easter Sunday to Pentecost Sunday, are to be celebrated “in joy and exultation as one feast day” (see UNLY 22).
So, make a plan! What will you do to bring more joy into your life this Easter Season? Will you savor a good spiritual book, take longer walks in the light of early evening, or begin a gratitude journal to capture the joys each Easter day brings? Will you take time to find a new Easter outfit that outwardly express the change that has taken place within you as you prayed, fasted, and gave alms throughout the forty days of Lent? And how will you cultivate joy in your home? Will you create an Easter candle for your family prayer table, spring clean the windows to let the sunlight in, or try a new recipe for an Easter dessert?
Consider ways to share Easter joy with those you work with, live near, study with, or communicate with from afar. Call or write the person who has been on your mind and in your heart. Make room at your table for neighbors and neophytes. Revisit the Works of Mercy, and make a commitment to live these practices so that others may come to know the Good News of Jesus Christ, our true reason for Easter “joy and exultation”, through you.
Help your students and the children, youth, and families you serve celebrate this season of joy, too. Go to RCLBenziger.com for a listing of Easter resources for students and teachers, including: Preparing the Easter Table and Welcoming the Alleluia; Celebrate the Saints and Solemnities of Easter; The Blessing of Seeds; Adorning an Image of the Blessed Virgin Mary; The Spirit’s Presence; and more!
Christ is risen! Christ is truly risen! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Joy is in the air!
Mary Malloy is a Senior Editor for RCL Benziger.
The calendar tells us spring is here, and for many in the country this is a welcome relief! The Church’s liturgical calendar tells us that we are coming upon Holy Week and the Easter Triduum, the most sacred days of the Church’s year.
Lent is a time of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, beginning on Ash Wednesday with the prayer, “Repent, and believe in the Good News.” The days of Lent leading up to Holy Week have been a time to reflect on our individual call to follow our baptismal promises and live a Christian life. Several key words can help to focus on the importance of Holy Week and the Easter Triduum.
DISCIPLESHIP
At the Last Supper we receive the mandate from Jesus to serve others. After Jesus washes the feet of his disciples, he tells us, “If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash on another’s feet” (John 13:14). A disciple is one who follows in the footsteps of Jesus. The re-enactment of the washing of the feet is not just for Holy Thursday, but is meant to be a visual reminder of living as a servant-disciple the entire year. How are we doing in following the command of Jesus to be a servant to others as we live out our individual call to discipleship?
HOLY
To be holy means to be set apart to do something special. Each of us is called to holiness - to be holy as the Lord your God is holy. Holiness is being in communion with God and sharing in his very life and love. The Holiness Code from the Book of Leviticus (chapters 17-26) helps us to focus on three things - faith in God, gratitude to God, and remembrance of God. This is not only a holy time but also a time for us to remember our call to holiness, and see how we are living up to that call.
SORROW
Good Friday is the most solemn day of the Triduum, when we gather for the celebration of the Lord’s Passion and Death. The vivid accounts in the Gospel calls us to think about the Apostles - their fear, their sorrow, and their loss. The Apostles had been with their best friend Jesus for three years. Now he was gone; they too had run away. Their sorrow and confusion must have been overwhelming. This is a day to remember and experience some of that emptiness and loss. Often when we lose someone we dearly love, we refer to a feeling of emptiness in our hearts. Think of the emptiness, sadness, and sorrow the Apostles must have felt during Jesus’s Passion and Death.
EASTER VIGIL
The good news is that the sorrow and loss of Holy Week end with the joyful celebration of the Easter Vigil. And two wonderful words are part of that celebration.
PEACE
Whenever Jesus met the women and the Apostles after the Resurrection, his first words were always, “Peace be with you!” What a comfort to experience true peace! Peaceful people seem to know and understand that “all will be well,” and that peace is the absence of all fear, despair, and longing. Christians radiate the peace that the Risen Lord brings on Easter morn. And that is the peace we are called to share with each other every time we go to Mass.
It is so important to truly offer someone peace, that same peace Jesus brings to his disciples after the Resurrection and that Jesus sees in all of us. Mother Teresa was a fitting example of this, as she described finding peace in all people. We are called to see peace in each other and to share that peace with each other. Often at Mass we do a quick wave or nod to others during the Sign of Peace. This year, let us try not only to truly give a sign of peace, but to BE a sign of peace to others.
JOY
In all of the Easter stories, whenever someone meets and encounters the Risen Lord, they are so filled with joy that they have to run back and tell others that the Lord is truly risen. In the Eastern churches, on Easter morn, Christians greet each other with the words, “Christ is risen!” and the response is, “Christ is truly risen!” This is a joyful greeting and statement of the basis and foundation of our faith. It is a joyful reminder of the great mystery of Faith - Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again.
Each of our lives should be filled with joy - the joy of knowing Christ is alive and actively working in our lives today. That joy must be so powerful we cannot keep it locked up inside - we have to go out and proclaim and live that joy. Once we have recalled the sorrow and sadness of Good Friday, then we are able to experience the fullness of the joy of the new life of the Risen Jesus. That is the joy of Easter, the joy that must be a vibrant part of our lives. As disciples and followers of Jesus, we live and radiate that joy in our lives.
Ron Lamping is a Senior Sales Representative for RCL Benziger.