The ceremonies of Holy Week and Easter Sunday may be over, but they remain the heart of our Catholic faith. They recount for us what transpired with Jesus in His final hours, in His suffering and death, and in His rising from the tomb.

 

Their importance flows from the fact that God became man. In the Incarnation, Jesus took on our human nature and lived among us. He felt thirst, exhaustion and probably even the common cold as each of us has endured at one time or another.

 

As a consequence, we accept with faith that the recounting of Jesus’ passion and resurrection are historical realities. These things did happen. They cannot be reduced to the status of myth or allegory. 

 

The importance of these occurrences as history was recognized early on by the faithful. Many of the sites in the Holy Land historically linked to Jesus’ life such as the churches of the Nativity and the Holy Sepulcher, and the hill of Calvary have been  reverenced since the earliest years of the Church. 

 

Pope Benedict, in one of his theological works, comments that the memory and veneration of such sites by the first believers merits the presumption of being true. 

 

The pope’s observation was lately given further credence. The site venerated as the tomb of Jesus was recently excavated for restorative purposes. For the first time in centuries the visible marble enclosure was removed. 

 

Underneath, to the surprise of the experts, was evidence of bedrock that one would have expected had the tomb originally been hewn out of a cave. In essence, the excavation corresponded to the description of the Gospels.

 

It is important to be able to reassure ourselves of the reasonableness of the history of Jesus’ presence among us. Even though the Gospel stories, and especially those recounting Holy Week and Easter, are rooted in a particular moment of history, we, centuries later, are not excluded from a deeper participation in them.

 

For example, on Holy Thursday at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, we are reminded that Jesus washed the feet of His disciples, and we are invited to enter into that moment spiritually in a way that transcends our mere memory. 

 

Likewise as we kiss and venerate the cross on Good Friday, we are able to join spiritually in an event of more than two millennia ago. 

 

And then at the Easter vigil, as we gather in the dark and hold candles of light, we join the pious women at the tomb in their astonishment of encountering the first signs of the resurrection.

 

All of this is because God is outside of and not ruled by the limitation of time as we are. He can share Himself with us in ways we cannot imagine if we open our faith and our hearts.

 

It is, for example, true to say that God has known each of us for all eternity. He did not have to wait for us to be conceived and then born for Him to love us and know our hearts.

 

Likewise at every Mass, the mystery before us is not simply that through the priest the bread becomes Jesus’ body and the wine His blood, but that Good Friday and the crucifixion of Jesus are made present to us. 

 

In the Mass Jesus, even now, offers His body and blood to the Father for our sins.

 

This time of the liturgical year moves us to widen our faith. We need to see and enter into not just the history but also the mystery of Jesus’ death and resurrection. 

 

It truly happened 2,000 years ago before the early Church. It is renewed today at Mass and during our prayer. And now we too are the witnesses.