Bound in Love

Palm Sunday is the beginning of Holy Week, and it is the only Sunday in the church year when we read two Gospels. The first gospel we read at the very beginning of Mass, which covers Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, and the second gospel was the very long reading of the passion, the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. 

This is the pinnacle of the church’s calendar. This week, we are going to touch on the central pillars of our faith. We believe that God made everything, even time itself, and that everything will find its just end when he closes time. We believe that Jesus Christ is truly God and truly human. We believe that he speaks with the full authority of God the Father, and yet we will see on Holy Thursday in the agony in the garden that he is obedient to the Father even to the point of death. We will see him institute the church: he establishes the clergy and the sacraments. Then he will go to make the sacrifice that our Mass liturgy re-presents at every celebration.

At the foot of the Cross, while Jesus is dying slowly, we see the church represented in Mary and the apostle John. John represents the clergy and Mary is the mother of the church. She is a lay woman. After the deep sadness of Good Friday, we are given the quiet of Holy Saturday to contemplate how the cross of death has become the tree of life. And then we will with great joy celebrate the resurrection of Jesus in the Easter Vigil and the Masses on Easter Sunday.

If we were to pick one aspect of Holy Week to focus on here for a few moments, it would be the Mass. In the document from the Second Vatican Council on the liturgy, we are told that the Mass is the “source and the summit” of our faith. The Mass ties directly to the events of Holy Week.

The heart of the Mass is a memorial of the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross on Good Friday. Every time we participate in the Mass we are putting ourselves in a mysterious way at the foot of the Cross and participating in that sacrifice that Jesus made to redeem us from the world of sin and death.

The night before he made that glorious sacrifice, he gave his apostles the instructions for how to do the memorial of that sacrifice. When we celebrate the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday this week, we will see that instruction, and we will see how Jesus gave his apostles their authority. He gave the apostles and their successors, which are the bishops and the priests who assist them, the power to forgive sins. And he gave one apostle, St. Peter, the power to define what is permitted and what is not permitted; he made him his Vicar, or steward, on earth to guide the Church during that long wait from his ascension to his second coming.

Holy Week is particularly important for over 100 people in our parish because they are coming into the church through baptism or reception and confirmation and will in many cases make their first Holy Communion at the Easter Vigil Saturday night.

The church offers many beautiful and unique services and celebrations during Holy Week that I encourage you to participate in. On Tuesday at the Cathedral, the Bishop will bless the new oils, the oil of the sick, the oil of catechumens, and the chrism. All his priests will be there together and they will renew their priestly vows. If you have the time it is worth the difficulty of driving there and parking to experience that Mass at least once in your life.

The rest of the services are offered here at our parish. We will have the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Thursday. Like every Mass it is a re-presentation of Jesus’s sacrifice on the Cross, but this particular celebration is also a celebration of the institution of the priesthood. And to make the point that what happens from Holy Thursday all the way to Easter is in some ways one long continuous event, we will not end the Mass on Holy Thursday in the traditional way but will make of procession with the Blessed Sacrament to the altar of repose and then strip the altar in preparation for Good Friday.

So now you’ve already been to church twice this week, but there’s even more for you on Good Friday. During the three hours that Jesus spends on the Cross during the crucifixion, we mark that time with reflections on the seven last sayings Jesus made from the Cross and then with the Stations of the Cross. And then after you’ve been at church for three hours, you have the wonderful opportunity to participate in the unique Good Friday liturgy. It’s not a Mass, but it is a prayer service – veneration of the Cross and Solemn Intercessions – followed by distribution of pre-consecrated hosts that were kept in the altar of repose.

And then the church is quiet through Friday evening and all day Saturday before we begin the great Easter Vigil. That Mass starts with a very special and unique blessing of fire and then lighting of the Easter candle before it opens into a recognizable Mass. And in the middle of that Mass, Father will baptize, Father will receive, Father will confirm, and then we will offer Holy Communion to everyone but especially these new members of the church.

So Holy Week is a holy week but also a busy week. See if you can grab a little bit of time from work on Friday to come be with us for some or all of the Good Friday services, come and experience the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, and come to Mass on Easter.