Importance of Holy Week
April 10 - 17, 2022
This week matters to us Christians, we ought to surrender to it.
Beginning with Palm Sunday, we Catholics enter into the High-Holy Days of Holy Week. This is a sacred time for us. It is not to be taken lightly, nor is it to be made into an after thought, something auxiliary to the rest of our life. Many people will want to celebrate Easter and Spring either on Palm Sunday or during this week, yet we need to hold fast to the Traditions of our Faith. Let us together enter into Holy Week, like we mean it. If we truly believe in the Salvation won for us in these days of the Lord's Passion, then let us live in such a way as to witness to their significance.
For us who consider ourselves followers of Christ, these are the days which hold the most significance to our Faith. One of the most important ways to bring people in the Kingdom of God is to live your life in the Kingdom with strength and firmness. If this Faith is indeed important, then I ought to live my life in a way that respects and shows that reality. Very few people will want to join something that member treat with lax efforts. When people see people living with intention and passion, it becomes at least attractive enough to investigate. When we live our lives with Passion, we will turn people off and draw others in. When we live our lives haphazardly, no one will care.
Listed below are three ways that we can take the faith more seriously for the duration of Holy Week.
Pray, Fast, Give Alms.
Be Holy!
Tenebrae
Traditionally people would gather for Tenebrae, a sung recitation of Office of Readings, Morning Prayer, and Evening Prayer on Good Friday and Holy Saturday. With traditional Tenebrae Liturgies, the Lamentations and Psalms would be chanted in a way that sounded like a minor key. During the different Psalms, strophes and canticles, a successive candle would be extinguished as the Church liturgically drew ever closer to the Death and then the Resurrection of Christ on Good Friday, and then on Easter.
Instead here, in our parish, we will have these prayers recited in common throughout this week, see the schedule below. And so similarly, we will cry out with lamination with the Church and with the Body of Christ as it is broken and bleeds. We will cry out using the prayers of the Church to experience the pain and awkwardness of this Holy Week so that we can more perfectly rejoice with the Resurrected Body of Christ, the Church in the joys of the Easter Celebrations. If you cannot join us, then use the app breviary (click the button) to pray along with us each Morning and Evening during Holy Week.
Triduum
The Sacred Triduum is one Liturgy that is celebrated over the course of three days. It begins with the Mass of the Lord's Supper on Thursday Evening, which includes the washing of the feet, the Procession removing the Eucharist from the Church, and the stripping of the Altar. Good Friday is the Liturgy of the Lord's Passion in which we venerate the Cross.Holy Saturday concludes the Triduum with the Great Vigil of Easter: the ceremony of light, the story of Salvation History the Christian Initiation of 3 new members who are completing RCIA, and return of the Gloria and Alleluia.
This Liturgy and the recognition that these three days are indeed different than all other days gives us the ability to know, recognize and remain faithful to the fact that we are different now that we are Christians. My humble suggestion here to allow this period of time to really take hold in your lives is to allow these days to take on the air of an uncomfortable silence. The temptation is that as we begin to gather with family and friends for Easter to allow the celebrations to begin early. However, this is a disservice to each person involved, as well as to the faith at large. It is worth while to respect these Sacred days with stillness and quiet prayer. To embrace the uncomfortable silence that ought to accompany the death of the Lord and His dissent into hell can easily be accomplished by avoiding the ‘noise’ of the world.
Paschal Fast
The Paschal Fast, which is used to bring us more deeply into the Sanctity of these Holy Days, begins on Midnight Holy Thursday Night / Good Friday Morning and concludes at the start of the Easter Vigil Holy Saturday Evening. Abstinence from meat only applies to the Calendar day of Friday, but the Fast (1 normal meal and 2 small meals) applies to the entirety of the Paschal Fast. Parties, celebrations, and other such feasts ought to wait until after the Vigil Mass has concluded. My suggestion: don’t watch television or movies; don’t listen to music; don’t attend crawfish boils and other parties; go to liturgy; read and meditate on the Scriptures; rest in the silence and allow God to speak to you. Sure, be with people, but be subdued. Eat, but in accord with the Fasting laws of the Church. Deny yourself your desires to feast, choosing rather to fast. Be true to your identity given to you at Baptism, be a witness to the world that what really matter is not the things we enjoy, but the natural flow of creation given to us through the Liturgy and the Spiritual Life of the Church