This Sunday, Palm Sunday, we enter into Holy Week. 

 

I hope we have all been doing acts of charity and especially penance for our sins during this Lenten season. Please make sure to take advantage of these last days before Easter to make a good confession, especially if you were unable to go on Be Reconciled Day this week.

 

There are so many spiritual lessons for us that come from attending the ceremonies of Holy Week. In each ceremony we should find ourselves walking with Jesus in a way that explains and helps our faith in 2019.

 

We might begin by reflecting on the most important fact of all. This Jesus, whose suffering and death we follow and celebrate this week is not simply a great and noble man. He is, as the centurion says in Mark’s Gospel, truly the Son of God (Mk 15:39).

 

Had He been a great teacher and a unifier of broken humanity His story would be worth remembering. But as the Son of God, His participation in this torture and sacrifice of Himself is infinitely more important to each of us. 

 

Jesus is the expression of the love of God that we speak of so often. “For God so loved the world that He gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life.” (Jn 3:16). 

 

Each of us needs to grapple regularly with that thought so that we don’t simply let it pass over us in excessive familiarity. The Son of the Most High God took on flesh to suffer and die for me.

 

That means that the suffering of Christ should be personal to each one of us. It was not just our “our” sins that Jesus took to the cross. It was “my” sins. And especially my mortal sins, so in need of God’s forgiveness. 

 

Blessed John Henry Newman composed a text of the Stations of the Cross in the 1800s. He highlights this point repeatedly. 

 

He says that not just Pilate, but also each of us, signed the death warrant of Christ with our sins. He states that the weight of the cross carried by Jesus was in fact the weight of our sins. 

 

Newman also states that the three falls of Jesus during that stations showed how dreadful was the power of our sins taken on by Him who would die for us.

 

This Holy Week is also filled with spiritual encouragement. The first Gospel of Palm Sunday recalls that the people of Jerusalem rightly honored Jesus as He rode in humbly on a colt. They cried out and waved their palms as we do at Mass on Palm Sunday. For a moment, we and all humanity recognize and honor our God.

 

On Holy Thursday night, we join with Jesus and the Apostles at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. We feel the sadness to come as they did on that night 2,000 years ago. 

 

But first, there is the joy of the great gift of Jesus leaving His presence with us. The Eucharist is Jesus truly present in the sacrament to continue strengthening our union with Him until He comes again. That joy overcomes even the sorrow of the cross.

 

Holy Week summarizes for us our faith and what should be our vision of life, in this world and the next. It highlights the personal love of God for each of us. And it realistically points the way to the tomb that will be the fate of each of us. But then Holy Week also reminds us of the resurrection from the dead.

 

Please attend as many of the Holy Week ceremonies as you possibly can. And see what thoughts and consolations God has in store for you.