This coming Sunday is Palm Sunday. With the Mass that day we begin the celebration of Holy Week that sees the conclusion of the Lenten Season and the celebration of the Sacred Triduum.

The major celebrations of next week invite us to join ourselves personally with our Lord at the various moments of His suffering, death and resurrection. At each stage, we can examine ourselves as we seek to draw closer to Christ.

On Palm Sunday, Mass begins with the blessing of the palms. If the procession is celebrated, we begin by hearing again of Jesus’s triumphal entrance into Jerusalem. A short time later, at the Gospel, we hear the proclamation of the passion of Jesus.

We might be struck by the contrast of those two moments. When Jesus enters Jerusalem, the people greet Him with joy and enthusiasm. They cry out ‘Hosanna.’ But by Good Friday, Jerusalem has turned against Jesus. No one rises to His defense as Pilate condemns Him to His horrible death.

Palm Sunday is the story of the weakness of the sinful human condition. We can often sense in our own hearts the joy of Christ’s presence. But temptations and pressures of this world often reduce us to silence or even to become complicit in sin which led to Christ’s death for us.

On Holy Thursday night, the Church celebrates the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. This celebration begins the Sacred Triduum or three days. Jesus began those days with a final, subdued, meal with the Apostles. At that supper He institutes the Eucharist, the Mass that has been entrusted to the Church of the ages, and of course to us. In so doing, Jesus instituted the ordained priesthood which is joined to Him and which, acting in His own person, perpetuates the gift of His Body and Blood.

The Mass ends with a procession of the Eucharist that helps us call to mind  Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. There we can pray with Him in His Eucharistic presence, making reparation for His isolation as the apostles slept.

On Good Friday, there is no Mass celebrated. We are instead able to attend the celebration of the Passion of the Lord.

That ceremony is simple and somber, helping us to feel once more the weight of our sins as well as the Lord’s pain and death. Beginning with the altar stark and bare, we will read St. John’s account of Jesus’s Passion. Next, the faithful come forward to venerate the crucifix. In that way, we are called to stand with Mary and the faithful women and St. John at the foot of the cross and be moved by the bodily sacrifice of the Son of God, offered to obtain forgiveness for the world.

Finally, Holy Communion is distributed to the faithful present. In that way we are joined to the Body and Blood of Jesus as He encouraged His faithful to do. We are not left even one day when that gift of grace is not possible for us. Our closeness to Jesus on the cross is intended to be heightened by our observance of Good Friday as a day of fasting (only one main meal) and abstinence from meat.

After these emotional two days, and the sense of sorrow, loss and penance for our sins lived through these liturgical ceremonies, Holy Saturday night celebrates the victory of Christ. The Mass begins in the dark of twilight broken by the Pascal fire. Christ is the light breaking through the darkness of sin.

This calls to our minds the glory of the resurrection and the hope that we have coming from Jesus’s rising from the dead.

Finally, the Masses on Easter Day will ring out with Alleluias as the Church celebrates the fulfillment of God’s promise of mercy, making eternal life with Him in the glory of heaven possible for all of us.

Holy Week is intense. From Palm Sunday until the resurrection, we are called to walk with Jesus and to love Him more deeply. We are reminded that the world has been redeemed. Our task is to witness the resurrected Lord and to live for Him.

May you and your family have a wonderful Holy Week and a Blessed Easter.