HOLY WEEK INFOGRAPHIC

The events of Holy Week are told in pieces throughout the four Gospels. Putting it all together can be a bit challenging, below is an infographic that lays everything out in one place. It even tells you exactly where to look in each Gospel if you want to read the text for yourself.

Astoundingly, “the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in him” the precise moment that his disciple departs to betray him. Though Jesus is “deeply troubled,” he maintains total control over the situation, as he does in each moment of his Passion. He exposes Judas’ betrayal and foretells Peter’s denial. “To raise up the tribes of Jacob, and restore the survivors of Israel,” Jesus offers himself out of love and embraces the consequences of every sin there ever was or will be. Thus we run to Jesus, our rock and stronghold, assured that his song of salvation has the final word.

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MEDITATION OF THE DAY.  Troubled, Betrayed, Denied for Love of Us

This is the week of tremendous graces…. As we look toward the Sacred Triduum, let us consider the words of Isaiah in the Good Friday liturgy, Yet it was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that he endured. What depths of meaning there are in these words! Sometimes we may make the mistake of coming with great fervor to Holy Week, determined to enter into the mystery of the Passion—considered only as the last extreme sufferings of our dear Lord’s life. We set these apart with the title “Passion,” and yet his whole life was a Passion. Passio is “a suffering, an act of patience.” As soon as our dear Lord left the womb of his Mother, he began his Passion. What happened in the Garden and on Calvary was the consummation of his lifelong Passion. He suffered as a newborn infant from cold, from an almost complete lack of comfort. As a very small child, he was suffering his Passion of being hunted…. As he grew up, he continued in his Passion, always being a Person who was never completely understood by anyone…. He continued into young manhood with a deepening of his Passion. He gathered around himself a select group of intimate friends, all of whom, save one, were to desert him; one was to betray him; one was to deny him….

Interlaced with all these great sufferings were what we might dare to call his little sufferings, which we should love to dwell on. These, too, were part of his Passion…. He took upon himself not only our sorrows, our anguish, our sins, but he took upon himself our weaknesses, our little sorrows. If we look into the happenings of his public life, we will see how much he suffered the very things we suffer. We must not commit the fallacy of thinking he suffered less because he was perfect…. He suffered more, not less, because his sensibilities were absolutely perfect….

We have a duty to relate our little disappointments to the sufferings of his Passion. We shall never sweat blood. We shall never be nailed to a cross. It is very unlikely that anyone would ever spit in our face. It is extremely difficult to imagine that anyone would ever strike us on our cheek. We shall not have to carry a cross and fall under it; we shall not have nails through our hands. But we shall always have many little things to suffer. We must not allow ourselves to forget that he knows them all. He took them upon himself. He didn’t just endure them as something that human nature could not escape. He wanted to experience them.

Luke 22:3-6. Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was one of the twelve; he went away and conferred with the chief priests and officers of the temple police about how he might betray him to them. They were greatly pleased and agreed to give him money. So he consented and began to look for an opportunity to betray him to them when no crowd was present.

The illustration evocatively depicts this infamous scene. If you go to Holy Mass every day of Holy Week, the Gospel readings provide the narrative of Jesus’ final days, an ever-quickening story that spins out of control and finally brings us to Good Friday.

The Son of Man indeed goes, as it is written of Him.” Though he will be handed over to “buffets and spitting,” Jesus knows that “he shall not be put to shame.” By enduring such treachery, foretold of old by the prophets, Jesus answers our sins with “his great love.” He is “compassionate with our errors,” speaking to us in our weariness and rousing us with His grace. With hearts gladdened and revived, we cry out: “I will praise the name of God in song, and I will glorify him with thanksgiving.”

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MEDITATION OF THE DAY Handed Over for Love of Us

Greater love has no man than this, to lay down his life for his friends, Jesus said at the Last Supper. We could exclaim: But there does exist a greater love than giving one’s life for one’s friends: your love! You did not give your life for your friends but for your enemies! Paul says that scarcely can someone be found who is ready to die for a just man, although such a man might be found: But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).

The word “friends” in the active sense indicates those who love you, but in the passive sense it indicates those whom you love. Jesus calls Judas friend (Mt 26:50), not because Judas loved him, but because he loved Judas! There is no greater love than giving one’s life for one’s enemies while considering them friends; this is what Jesus meant by his statement. People can be—or act as though they are—enemies of God, but God will never be the enemy of any human being…. Jesus died, crying out, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do…. It is a peremptory request made with the authority that comes from being the Son: Father, forgive them!

I knew an intellectual woman who professed to be an atheist. One day she got the kind of news that leaves people stunned: her sixteen-year-old daughter had a tumor in her rib cage. They operated, and she returned from the torment of the operating room with nasogastric tubes, drainage tubes, and intravenous feeding tubes coming out of her body. The girl was suffering horribly and groaning, and she did not want to hear any words of comfort. Knowing that her daughter was devoutly religious, and thinking that it would please her, the mother asked her, “Do you want me to read you something from the Gospel?” “Yes, Mama, read me the Gospel,” she answered. “What do you want me to read you from the Gospel?” “Read me the Passion.” The mother, never having read the Gospel, ran to get a Bible from the hospital chaplains. She sat at her daughter’s bedside and began to read. After a while, the girl fell asleep, but the mother continued to read silently in the semidarkness up to the end. She said in the book she wrote afterward that “the daughter fell asleep, but the mother woke up!” Her reading of the Passion of Christ had changed her life forever.

By Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa is a Capuchin Franciscan priest and the preacher to the papal household. From The Gaze of Mercy, A Commentary on Divine and Human Mercy, Marsha Daigle-Williamson.

Your all-powerful word from heaven’s royal throne leapt into the doomed land, a fierce warrior bearing the sharp sword of your inexorable decree, and alighted, and filled every place with death, and touched heaven, while standing upon the earth.

Wisdom 18:14-16