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Holy Week

Overview

Holy Week for Christians is traditionally our High Holy Days, our great feast. This will never change, because the Paschal Mystery of Christ is central to Christian belief and Christian life.

  • Our celebrations are not for God's sake. He doesn't need it. It is for US.
  • It is a time to reflect on what happened to us this Lent, just ending, to pray that, because of Lent, we will be a more fervent individual and parish... afire with love for the risen Christ.
  • It speaks of he constant theme of our faith: God comes to us... "I am your God and you are my people." It speaks of the truth that God, to save us,
has come to us,
has taken on our ways,
has spoken our language,
has made our human circumstances a tool of saving power.
  • The liturgies of this week speak in word and symbol of great truths of our faith...
giving is not absurd,
love is victorious,
all we do or say has a new and splendid meaning,
that above and beyond and through our pain and confusion, life is gloriously affirmed.
  • Holy Week is not a mere remembrance of the passion and death and resurrection of Jesus. It is an actual reality. What we celebrate in each liturgy this week is our entrance HERE AND NOW into the newness of life that is ours through our union with the risen Lord.
  • Holy Week is about life. It means life is for giving. It means that if you love enough, if you care enough, then you have to show it.
  • The change from suffering to glory,
from death to life,
from darkness to light,
from sin to grace,
from hatred to love,
from shame to glory... is the change we celebrate at EVERY Eucharist, but ESPECIALLY during the events of Holy Week.

Passion Sunday

  • The official change from Palm to Passion Sunday points up the church's desire that we focus, not on the palms, but on the Passion. However, in common usage, it still remains thought of as Palm Sunday.
  • On this day, we enter into the redemptive mysteries. There is no turning back. On this day, we deal with our NEED TO CRY HOSANNA! It is the experience the church needs to summon itself out of Lent and into the Passover Mystery.
  • It speaks to us of our double participation:
Acclaiming Christ with hosannas, and calling for his execution.
It expresses the ambivalence of Christian life...our desire to serve Christ,and the fact that so often our actions do not square with our desires.
  • Passion Sunday and Easter Sunday are related. One complements the other. Each tells the same story from different viewpoints. On this day, we begin in joy and end in sorrow. The Triduum (The three days of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Vigil) begins in sorrow and ends in the true joy of the resurrection.
  • Passion Sunday is the entrance to Holy Week
the climax of Lent
the celebration of a contest whose outcome we already know and proclaim.
  • Lent has prepared us for the telling of the story which is begun on this day. It is not a story of gloom and depression.
  • The environment of the day is natural celebration. In ancient times, it was a procession from the Mount of Olives to Jerusalem, a welcoming procession like that of the Lord himself. And like that day, it was children who celebrated in a way that is most meaningful to them... waving whatever they could get their hands on. Palm branches were common to the area. The church allows local foliage, pine branches, lilacs, banners, branches tied with ribbon, etc.
  • Red is the dominant color... a symbol of the victory of love and life over death.
  • We can catch the flavor of the first part of today's liturgy by considering some of the words used:
HosannaKingLoudly praised
MessiahComesCarried branches
WelcomedEnteredProclaimed the Resurrection of Life
  • The entry with palms is a bittersweet memory. For us, it signifies in symbol our recognition of Jesus as a crucified Messiah.
  • The first two readings tell much about the atmosphere. Isaiah uses strong words. This passage maintains the royal character of the Passion story. Paul - "God raised him on high. JESUS IS LORD!"

Monday
Tuesday --- are three days of preparation for the Easter Triduum.
Wednesday

Easter Triduum - The Three Days

  • The 40-day season of Lent with its practices should find us ready on Holy Thursday to enter the short three-day season that is the very heart of the church's year.
  • Lent quietly concludes on Holy Thursday, before we begin the evening liturgy.
  • The Triduum begins Thursday evening and lasts until Saturday evening. It includes the liturgies of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil.
  • The Masses of Sunday morning are an "after the fact" event and begin the 50 days of rejoicing called Eastertime.
  • By having only one name for all three days, the church focuses on something important... the fact that only one mystery is being celebrated: THE PASCHAL MYSTERY. The three days are not separate liturgies. Rather it is one celebration extending over three days.
  • As we move into the Triduum, the passion is never separated from the full image of the death/resurrection event. It is always the glorious cross, the triumphant cross, the dying and the conquering death that we now know. This does not mean we neglect the suffering of Jesus or of the whole world. We simply embrace its mystery as best we can.
  • These seasons (Lent, the Triduum, and Eastertime) are about initiation and the sacraments involved (baptism, confirmation, Eucharist). Baptism is once-for-all in our church. We do not prepare for re-baptism. Once we have entered those waters, whether as a child or adult, we never fully emerge from them. All of life is fulfilling those promises. Lent, Triduum, Eastertime only takes us deeper into those waters.

Holy Thursday

  • This is the night it all began for us. The liturgy of Holy Thursday binds us together, so we can strengthen each other in the face of suffering, death, loneliness, desolation. The Passover meal, the Eucharist, is sufficient to carry us along on our journey of faith. This is no empty, ancient ritual... like Jesus, we risk everything in offering this Eucharist... it means we live and are willing to die for one another. Only this kind of love for Christ and one another gives any meaning to what we share "until he comes again."
  • The liturgies of these three days are NOT historical representations of what happened 2000 years ago. They express OUR Passover... what is happening to us HERE AND NOW.
  • This first gathering on Thursday evening is dominated by a feeling of our identity as church ... by how our passing over from death to life is shown in our service to each other and to the world.
  • The POWER of this liturgy comes from its unique gestures - one of which is the washing of feet. This action is called the "mandatum," a word which means "command."
  • This gesture is not simply a reenactment of what Jesus did... not is it simply fulfilling his command to "do what I have done to you." John tells about this action immediately before he begins his account of Jesus' death. THE MEANING OF THIS ACTION IS THE MEANING OF THE DEATH OF JESUS. His is a life of total service to others... even if they don't deserve it. He loved us to the very limit of love. When he commands us to love as he did, he asks nothing that he did not do himself.
  • The mandatum identifies us as church ... it speaks to us
of our need to minister to others (wash feet),
of our need to allow ourselves to be ministered to,
of ways we die and rise in such ministry.

Good Friday

  • The sober ceremonies of this "day of days" are not despondent or even mournful. They speak of start reality of love and sacrifice of Jesus in our behalf. The ritual meal of Thursday is brought to life by giving himself on the Cross, "so that we might have life and have it abundantly" through him. "We do not mourn as those without faith" but understand more fully now that "by his bruises we are healed," and that "Christ had to suffer and so enter into his glory." Christ is glorified precisely because he is the Suffering Servant.
  • The red vestments recall the glories of Christ as we hailed him King on Passion Sunday and symbolize his love now poured out for us.
  • The texts of the liturgy reveal a confident (though restrained) joy in the fact that the cross is the symbol of victory and the door to life.
  • The Veneration of the Cross that is part of this ritual calls for the use of a cross, not a crucifix. "This is the wood of the cross..."
  • The Veneration is of the person of Christ and what his death means in terms of love for us. It is a dialogue of love that is carried over into Holy Communion.
  • This participation in the triumphant death of Christ is meant to continue Christ's healing work with us, bringing us pardon, comfort, strength of faith, and the assurance of eternal salvation.
  • This Friday is "Good" because it is the day on which sin and death did their worst... and it was not enough. Jesus died battered, beaten, exhausted, suffering, wracked with pain... yet still trusting and confident in God's loving care. THAT was his triumph!

Friday and Saturday

We maintain an atmosphere of penance, silence, and restraint as we meditate on our utter dependence upon Christ and on the depth of his love and promises.

"On Good Friday and, if possible, also on Holy Saturday until the Easter Vigil, the Easter fast is observed everywhere." Church law requires fast and abstinence on Good Friday. The church calendar urges us to go beyond this. This is an EASTER fast... not a Lenten one. We fast for these days because of what is happening at the Vigil.

EASTER VIGIL

The Easter Vigil in successive stages moves toward the jubilation of Easter. The seed that was planted in us at the Echaristic meal on Holy Thursday brings us through love to a new life in Christ Jesus. Morning has broken! Out of the tomb - new life! We begin to live again!

At the Vigil, the parish gathers together for an evening of watching and praying. The liturgy is centered on the font because we are baptized people. All our life long, we are living our what happened to us in the water of baptism.

To Sum It Up

PASSION SUNDAY - stepping into the procession - the journey

...palms, sign of victory, sign of martyrdom
...Hosannas mingle with the proclamation of the Passion
...the days in between - stepping stones to the Great Triduum

HOLY THURSDAY - celebrating the meal, the Eucharistic feast

...power and powerlessness, sacrifice and love revealed before us in bread and wine
...incense - prayers of praise
...Spring flowers touched by candlelight, signs of life and hope
...moving in procession with the Blessed Sacrament - leaving emptiness behind

GOOD FRIDAY - following the cross, simple cross of wood held high - sign of redemption sign of love

...bare, stark, silent - images of frail humanity
...dark hollow stillness of death pushing through the nothingness of Saturday to the very gate of Sunday's dawn

EASTER VIGIL - dispelling darkness in the rays of paschal light

...readings - remembering God in human history
...water, oil, light, initiation into Christ dying/rising, alive in the newness of faith
...ablaze with floral colors, bright with joyous song
...we proclaim: He is risen! He lives... now, today... among us... here... forever...

ALLELUIA!

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