The Holy Week – Our Annual Catechism
Lent’s desert journey of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving prepares our hearts for the summit of the liturgical year – the Holy Week. We enter these sacred days not as spectators, but as participants. On Palm Sunday, our ‘Hosannas’ are sung ironically as we are reminded of just how fickle human hearts can be and how quickly heroes can become hate figures. The Chrism Mass underscores our communal priesthood, our anointing for service.
The Triduum – Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil – unfolds as one continuous liturgy. On Thursday, we encounter the humility of Lord as he dons the towel and basin, washing the feet of his disciples and friends and then providing us with the everlasting gift of the Eucharist, the ‘source and summit’ of our Christian life. Good Friday invites us to fix our eyes with a loving gaze upon the Wood of the Cross, the throne of a sacrificial King by whose wounds we are healed. And in the silent waiting of Holy Saturday as the great King sleeps, we keep vigil with a world not only awaiting but crying out for the light.
Finally the waiting is over and in the dark night a fire burns and the joyful intonation of the Exsultet rings out to thrill our hearts. The vigil of readings traces God’s faithfulness to His creation and to those he has made in his own image and likeness. With water, word, and oil, new members of the Church are reborn and the Easter Alleluia, a word silenced for forty days bursts out announcing: ‘He is risen!’
Holy Week is our annual catechism in love’s true cost and the victory Christ won for us over suffering and death. If we allow the wonder of this Holy Week liturgy to form us anew, we may truly emerge with Christ into the unending joy of Easter, transformed and sent to be witnesses of this Hope to the world.
Paul Clayton-Lea
Editor
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