Here is a list of what is found on this page, that can help guide us on this holiest of weeks, the events of which have changed our destiny forever. Let us not be followers who sleep in the garden of Gethsemane but close friends of Jesus who will stay awake, keep watch and journey with the Master and His mother Mary; watch Him be the ambush predator Who defeats sin, death, satan, evil, and hell.
- HOLY WEEK SCHEDULE
- EASTER SCHEDULE
- A PRAYER TO BEGIN HOLY WEEK
- 5 THINGS TO DO TO MAKE HOLY WEEK THE MOST IMPORTANT WEEK OF THE YEAR
- 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.
- HOW ARE WE TO ENTER INTO THE GREAT WEEK REFLECTION?
- EACH DAY OF HOLY WEEK REFLECTION
- HOLY WEEK HOMILIES
5 THINGS TO DO TO MAKE HOLY WEEK THE MOST IMPORTANT WEEK OF THE YEAR
Written By Becky Roach
Holy Week should be the most important week of the year for all Christians. It should be the week in which we give of ourselves to the fullest in order to fully receive Christ during the Easter celebration. That’s the ideal.
However, we all know that sometimes life just gets in the way. Work or school, various activities, and even our family responsibilities can keep us from making the most of the week that should be set apart from all others.
Other times it’s not our busyness that prevents us from living out Holy Week, it’s our laziness. Maybe we’ve worked so hard to sacrifice during Lent that, by the time Holy Week hits, we’re done or, maybe, we never even started Lent and when Holy Week begins we feel no motivation to try.
Whatever your situation is, Jesus is still calling you to seek Him with all your heart during this time. Use our 5 tips to help you make the most of Holy Week this year. Come Easter Sunday, you will be so happy that you put forth the time and effort to be with Christ.
A PRAYER TO BEGIN HOLY WEEK
Lord Jesus, as we enter into Holy Week once again, I come before You to renew my love and gratitude and to ask You to open my heart to all the special graces that this week contains.
I know that everything that took place during this week two thousand years ago was done for the salvation of the world, and yet as if for me alone. As You carried Your cross, You thought of each man, woman, and child You would redeem. As You suffered betrayal, denial, and the fleeing of Your disciples, as you experienced the mockery and scorn of the crowds, You knew of every human betrayal and denial that would ever take place, and You knew of all the sufferings and humiliations every person would ever undergo in every corner of the world. You saw my whole life, every moment of my existence.
Lord Jesus, I want to live this week in union with You. I want the mysteries of Your Passion, Death, and Resurrection to continue to transform my life. Though I do not know the hour of my physical death, I do know that at each moment of my life, lived in union with You, You can put to death all that separates me from You. By Your grace, I have already been raised with You, and the life I now live is not my own, but Yours.
In the Sacrifice of the Mass today and every day, I unite myself to You. I offer You my whole heart, my whole life. Through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer You all my prayers, works, joys, and sufferings—holding nothing back. I want to be entirely clothed in You, to be conformed to You, and I trust that as You look upon me from heaven, You hold nothing back. You love me with the entirety of your Sacred Heart.
Lord Jesus, I trust in You. Lord Jesus, I love You.
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.
HOW ARE WE TO ENTER INTO THE GREAT WEEK?
How are we to enter into the Great Week, Holy Week, the single most important week in the history not merely of the world but of the universe? Better, how can we enter into the Great Week with ever sharper spiritual eyesight? Today and next week, we will try to probe more deeply into these massively important questions, mindful that the first essential principle for transformation in the Church is re-acquiring a biblical worldview. At no time is this more important than the days about to begin. We will do that by calling our attention today to three biblical texts. We’ll also call attention to four texts from some early Church preachers.
“Can the prey be taken from the mighty, or the captives of a tyrant be rescued? Surely, thus says the LORD, ‘Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken, and the prey of the tyrant shall be rescued, for I will contend with those who contend with you…Then all flesh shall know that I am the LORD, your Savior, and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob” (Isaiah 49:24-26).
“When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are in peace. But when someone stronger than he assails him and overcomes him, he takes away his armor in which he trusted and divides the spoil” (Luke 11:21-22).
“The ruler of this world is coming. He has no power over Me” (John 14:30).
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These three texts, among many that could be chosen to be sure, help us better see what is going on as we prepare to focus our attention on the Passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, King of the universe. Through the prophet Isaiah, God helps us mysteriously understand that the race He has created in His own image and likeness finds itself in a state of captivity, bound and unable to free itself. That captivity is to the powers of Sin and Death, which dominate the world as a result of our first parents being deceived by the devil, and thereby selling their descendants (i.e., us) into their hands. However, through the same prophet the Lord God promises that He Himself will fight for us and that we will be rescued. How? He doesn’t tell us, and neither we, nor the devil, would ever have guessed His strategy.
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus speaks the above words after He has rescued a man from demonic possession. His words help us understand that what has just happened before everyone’s eyes is part of what had been prophesied by Isaiah. God Himself has come to rescue His creature, not just this one man, but the entire human race, and not just from possession but from the powers of Sin and Death. We need to note well that Jesus describes Himself not only as stronger than the devil but as an assailant who will overcome our enemy so that his goods, that is to say us, can go free.
Finally, in the Gospel of John, just before He enters into His Passion, Jesus makes clear that the enemy, strong as he is—so much stronger than we can imagine!—has no power over Him. In other words, Jesus is not just kind. Or gentle. Or compassionate. Or merciful. He is all of these things, and so much more, to be sure! But He is more than these. He is LORD, which is to say nobody else is. He has no rival. And He is utterly unconquerable.
Given all of this, what is Jesus doing on the cross? Yes, doing. Okay, it sounds like a crazy question. After all, it doesn’t look like He’s doing anything. It looks like He’s a helpless victim, humiliated, naked, beaten, crucified, defeated, His life slowly ebbing away. But remember: “The ruler of this world,” the devil, has “no power” over Him. You can’t nail God to a cross. Not even the devil can. This One on the cross is the One through whom a universe that is 46 billion light years across was called into being. There’s only one way this Jesus can get on a cross. He has to want to be there. Now, why in the world would He want to be there? What was He doing…?
Let us look at how the early Church used to answer that question—and it’s not how we typically hear it preached today. In the meantime, let’s ask the Lord in these holiest of days to understand the mystery of faith like never before. |
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What was Jesus doing on the cross?
Let’s internalize this question further. And as we prepare to enter the three holiest days of the year, days that forever changed the history of the universe, it’s worth asking yet again. Even more, it’s worth asking the Holy Spirit to give us deeper insights into this question as we gather together for the Sacred Triduum starting Holy Thursday evening.
Classically, there are three ways to understand what Jesus was doing on the cross. None of these is exhaustive; together they help us better understand the crucial events of the next few days. One of the answers is practically unknown and almost never preached about. And yet it was accentuated over and over again in the preaching of the early Church.
The three ways of understanding what Jesus was doing on the cross are these:
- He was showing us the love of the Father (think John 3:16, among many possible passages)
- He was making atonement for our sins (think 2 Cor 5:21 or 1 Pet 2:24)
- He was going to war to rescue us from powers we cannot compete against
Each of these is true, to be sure, though, again, none of them is exhaustive. We need to keep them all in mind as we enter these days and pray to understand the Passion more clearly, so that we can respond all the more generously and wholeheartedly. But as we face abysmally bad metrics with regards to pretty much every key performance indicator in the Church, and as we are confronted with so many challenging and scandalous issues in both the culture and the Church, it’s easy to fall prey to discouragement or worse. It’s critical, then, to remember that Jesus is Lord! He has defeated the powers of Sin and Death, He has bound the strong man, and He is not nervous or anxious in the face of all that’s going on. He has triumphed!
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On the cross, Jesus was not only showing us the Father’s love, and not only making atonement for us—crucial as those both are! He was also defeating the dark powers and liberating us. And, as the early Church Fathers often remarked, how fitting it was that the one who deceived our race at the beginning should himself be deceived—by God!—into bringing about His own defeat. There’s so, so much that could be said to make this point, but in this Great Week, let’s listen in on just four excerpts from homilies of old. As we do so, let’s ask the Holy Spirit to help us celebrate Easter like never before. Ours is an age riddled with fear and anxiety and despair. Ours is the task of being heralds of hope to those around us, a hope that is anchored in the glorious and real resurrection of Jesus from the dead, and His defeat of the dark powers that had enslaved our race since Eden.
“In this way the wicked one, by pouring forth deadly words, frequently ensnares some of those who live a good life, but we must not believe his promises or fear his threats for he always deceives and none of his promises are true. For if everything he says were not a lie, how is it that when he made such infinitely extravagant promises the Lord hooked him like a serpent using the hook of the cross and he was bound with a halter like a beast of burden, and tied up in chains like a runaway slave, his lips pierced by an iron ring, and he was not given the chance to devour any of the faithful at all? Now he is as miserable as a sparrow caught by Christ in the net to be mocked at; now he groans for his companions who have been trodden beneath the Christians’ heel like scorpions and serpents. He who took pride in the fact that he had destroyed all the seas, he who promised that he would hold the world in his hand, look at him! You have conquered him and look how he is unable to prevent me arguing with him” (St. Athanasius, Life of St. Anthony).
“Death trampled our Lord underfoot, but he in his turn treated death as a highroad for his own feet. He submitted to it, enduring it willingly, because by this means he would be able to destroy death in spite of itself. Death had its own way when our Lord went out from Jerusalem carrying his cross; but when by a loud cry from that cross he summoned the dead from the underworld, death was powerless to prevent it.
“Death slew him by means of the body which he had assumed, but that same body proved to be the weapon with which he conquered death. Concealed beneath the cloak of his manhood, his godhead engaged death in combat; but in slaying our Lord, death itself was slain. It was able to kill natural human life, but was itself killed by the life that is above the nature of man.
“Death could not devour our Lord unless he possessed a body, neither could hell swallow him up unless he bore our flesh; and so he came in search of a chariot in which to ride to the underworld. This chariot was the body which he received from the Virgin; in it he invaded death’s fortress, broke open its strongroom and scattered all its treasure” (St. Ephrem, Sermon of our Lord).
“The devil was deluded by the death of the Lord…for through the visible mortality of His flesh, Christ—whom the devil was trying to kill—concealed his divinity, like a snare in which He might entangle him like an unwise bord by a clever trick…The devil, although he attacked the flesh of the humanity in Christ that was evident, was captured as if by the fishhook of His divinity that was lying hidden. For there is in Christ the fishhook of divinity; the food, however, is the flesh; the fishing line is the genealogy that is recited by the Gospel. Holding this fishing line truly is God the Father” (St. Isidore of Seville, Sentences).
And, the best for last…
“Who is he who contends with me? Let him stand in opposition to me. I set the condemned man free; I gave the dead man life; I raised up the one who had been entombed. Who is my opponent? I, he says, am the Christ.
“I am the one who destroyed death, and triumphed over the enemy, and trampled Hades under foot, and bound the strong one, and carried off man to the heights of heaven, I, he says, am the Christ. Therefore, come, all families of men, you who have been befouled with sins, and receive forgiveness for your sins.
“I am your forgiveness, I am the passover of your salvation, I am the lamb which was sacrificed for you, I am your ransom, I am your light, I am your saviour, I am your resurrection, I am your king, I am leading you up to the heights of heaven, I will show you the eternal Father, I will raise you up by my right hand. This is the one who made the heavens and the earth, and who in the beginning created man, who was proclaimed through the law and prophets, who became human via the virgin, who was hanged upon a tree, who was buried in the earth, who was resurrected from the dead, and who ascended to the heights of heaven, who sits at the right hand of the Father, who has authority to judge and to save everything, through whom the Father created everything from the beginning of the world to the end of the age.
“This is the alpha and the omega. This is the beginning and the end–an indescribable beginning and an incomprehensible end. This is the Christ. This is the king. This is Jesus. This is the general. This is the Lord. This is the one who rose up from the dead. This is the one who sits at the right hand of the Father. He bears the Father and is borne by the Father, to whom be the glory and the power forever. Amen” (Melito of Sardis, “On the Pascha”). |
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Monday of Holy Week | Make Holy Week The Most Important Week Of The Year
Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one with whom I am pleased.—Isaiah 42:1
Mary understood, as Judas did not, that no money could ever repay the love that carried Jesus toward the cross. She offered instead the intensely personal homage of her loving faith: anointing Him for death, she proclaimed Him the Christ, meaning “the Anointed One.” She remains His faithful witness as her memory is kept today.
Jesus defends Mary from Judas and her other detractors, as He defends the lowly, the brokenhearted, the captives of every kind. For their sake, He will not defend himself.
Judas thought Mary’s anointing was wasteful, preventing the costly nard from benefiting the poor. In point of fact, it served precisely that purpose when “the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil.” The worst sort of poverty is to be unaware of or unmoved by the Savior’s presence, and Mary’s action drew the attention of everyone to Jesus. He is the only one who will “establish justice on the earth,” He is the true “light for the nations.” Are we willing to “waste” our lives for the love of Jesus? To be embarrassingly attentive to Him? Do we believe that He is worth it?
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MEDITATION OF THE DAY. Breaking Open Our Vases
Holy Week is a week of tenderness. All through the Gospel, from His birth right up to His death, the Lord exhibits much tenderness, especially in the way He treats the sinner. When the woman taken in adultery is brought to Him, Jesus shows great delicacy. It is very delicate to turn your back to a person like that, who is ashamed, write something in the sand, and wait until the last person has left; and then with infinite tenderness and gentleness say, “Has no man condemned you? Neither do I. Go, and sin no more.”
When Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with ointment and Judas complains, Jesus says, “Leave her alone; she has kept this scent for the day of my burial. You will have your poor with you always; you will not always have me.” Tenderness—pity. Not the pity that hurts, the pity that makes the poor feel squeamish inside, not just the passing pity of the mind, but the pity of the heart. Jesus did not break the bruised reed nor quench this kind of flame.
We have walked through Lent to come to this week in order to remember. It is painful. Painful because we love God and watch Him suffer, yet joyous because we want to cry out our thanks to Him. It is our week too in that now we must be crucified. We must go through the suffering He has gone through. That is His great gift to us, that we make up what is wanting in the suffering of Jesus (Colossians 1:24). Nothing is really wanting in the suffering of Christ, but He allows us to partake of it…. It is a fantastic, incredible week, in which we are allowed to see how much God the Father loved, how much God the Son obeyed the Father, and also loved us. It is the week of the Spirit: I have endowed Him with my Spirit (Matthew 12:18). Each minute, each hour, each day of this week is a pilgrimage interiorized, a journey inward, to meet the Triune God who dwells within us. But also to follow Jesus, to follow Him from the moment of the changing of the bread and wine, to the stone of agony in the Garden, to the departure of all His disciples…. The path is clear. Jesus made it; we cannot miss it. There are drops of blood along it, in the sands of time. We must follow them. This is the hour of us breaking all the vases we have in our hearts and spilling upon his feet all the perfumes we ever accumulated throughout our lives. What use have we of perfumes when we have God?
From Season of Mercy by Servant of God Catherine de Hueck Doherty († 1985) born in Russia and founded the Madonna House Apostolate in Combermere, Canada, which today serves the poor in six countries.
Tuesday of Holy Week | Make Holy Week The Most Important Week Of The Year
The one to whom I give the morsel I dip into the dish, it is he who will betray me. —cf. John 13:26
Judas and Peter both betrayed the One whose bread they had taken. The difference between them was that Peter loved and repented; Judas despaired. The Lord, risen, would have repaid them both with his forgiving love. Judas could not even imagine the possibility.
Jesus was deeply troubled and testified, “Amen, amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” (John 13:21)
Judas is not the first or the last to betray the love of God. Betrayal began with Adam and Eve; it runs like a thread through the story of Israel, and through our own. But Christ’s love is greater than our betrayals.
Peter’s cocksure self-reliance will be undone when he hears the cock crow. And though Peter will in fact deny Jesus, Jesus will not deny Peter. Contrition and humility will forge the way to great sanctity for Peter. Similarly, our peace of soul comes from the fact that Christ loves us because of who He is, not because of what we do. We do not earn Christ’s love by proving our own goodness, nor do we lessen His love with our failures. We keep our eyes on the Savior at every moment and in every circumstance of our life, especially in our temptations, fears, and weakness: “My God is now my strength!” And when we have sinned, we cry out, “incline Your ear to me, and save me.”
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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.
From The Great Week: An Explanation of the Liturgy of Holy Week by Mother Mary Francis († 2006) was abbess of the Poor Clare Monastery of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Roswell, New Mexico.
(Spy) Wednesday of Holy Week | Make Holy Week The Most Important Week Of The Year
To accomplish your plan, Father, He gave Himself up to death. (cf. Eucharistic Prayer IV)
Judas personifies all that good people most despise: dishonesty, venality, treachery. For humanity at our most despicable, the Lord Jesus willingly suffered the plots of the enemies who banded together to seek His life.
Spy Wednesday gets its name because this is the day on which Judas betrayed Jesus to the Sanhedrin. Because Judas is thought to be sneaky, his actions conjured up the image of a spy.
Once a friend, “Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, ‘What are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you?’ They paid him thirty pieces of silver, and from that time on he looked for an opportunity to hand him over” (Matthew 26:14-16). It is Matthew 26:16 where he assumes the role of “spy” since, from the point of receiving the silver, he was searching for an opportunity for Jesus to be arrested leading, of course, to His Passion. What occurs next depends on the Gospel with both Mark and Matthew describing Judas talking to the chief priests and Luke mentioning that “then Satan entered Judas” (Luke 22:3).
This day is also called Silent Wednesday because the Gospels don’t tell us what Jesus was doing on Wednesday of Holy Week. He was “silent” on that day. Some speculate that after journeying to Jerusalem and spending two exhausting days in disputes with the authorities, Jesus rested on Wednesday with his close friends in Bethany. Let’s observe this special day, by imagining that Jesus is inviting Himself over to rest in your house for a bit.
It can be so easy for our minds to become overbusied, our bodies overworked, and our calendars overscheduled. But rest is essential because it’s restorative. Rest is also holy because it creates an opening for us to welcome Jesus into our hearts. Imagine yourself sitting with him at your kitchen table, catching up as you would with a friend. Or picture yourself coming home from a busy workday to find him waiting at your front door, eager for you to invite him in for dinner. Even if it means just slipping away for a few minutes of stillness with him, make the most of the opportunity; nothing is as refreshing as spending quiet time with the Lord!
Throughout this season of Lent, you have been journeying with Jesus as he walks toward Calvary. You’re almost there! Tomorrow evening, you will watch as he is arrested and beaten. On Friday, you’ll witness his crucifixion. And on Sunday, you’ll see him gloriously resurrected. But today, Silent Wednesday, is the calm before the storm.
As you read the Gospel for today, listen to Jesus’ voice echoing through the centuries, telling you, “In your house I shall celebrate the Passover” (Matthew 26:18). Jesus has chosen to spend today with you. Your schedule may not be silent today, but you can still find a special way to rest with him and prepare yourself—body, soul, and spirit—for the great celebrations that will start tomorrow evening.
“Jesus, help me to find some quiet time today. Come, Lord, and prepare me for what you have in store this week.”
Holy Thursday | Make Holy Week The Most Important Week Of The Year
Good Friday | Make Holy Week The Most Important Week Of The Year
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.
The Difference a Simple Invitation Can Make; who will you invite to Easter Mass?
As we start the holiest of weeks; where the events of this week have changed the world, a week that celebrates and calls to mind the singularly most important events of all time: the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, for us. 𝗡𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗹𝗹, 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘀𝗲 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀.
𝘔𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘧𝘶𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘵𝘩, 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘧𝘶𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘦 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘰𝘯 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘩𝘰𝘱𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘥𝘧𝘶𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘶𝘴 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬, 𝘪𝘯 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘴𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘰𝘭𝘴, 𝘪𝘯 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴, 𝘪𝘯 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘯𝘦𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘩𝘰𝘰𝘥𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘦𝘭𝘴𝘦𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘨𝘨𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘎𝘰𝘥, 𝘭𝘦𝘵’𝘴 𝘱𝘳𝘢𝘺𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘶𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘸𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘪𝘯𝘷𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘦 𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘨𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘊𝘩𝘶𝘳𝘤𝘩.
A priest recently shared how he found that over the course of many years of teaching those who were coming into the Church, either through baptism or confirmation, he was always struck by how many of them would tell him that they would have gladly come to Church much earlier had only someone invited them. There are people outside our parish doors, that won’t meet Jesus, won’t be drawn to Him, unless they are either invited by us, or they see something different, attractive, and engaging in us and ask us what that difference is.
𝗦𝗼 𝗹𝗲𝘁’𝘀 𝗱𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿. 𝗟𝗲𝘁’𝘀 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗛𝗼𝗹𝘆 𝗧𝗵𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗱𝗮𝘆, 𝗼𝗿 𝗚𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗙𝗿𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘆, 𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗩𝗶𝗴𝗶𝗹, (𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗯𝗲𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗴𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿, 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 “𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗳 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝘃𝗶𝗴𝗶𝗹𝘀” 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 “𝗴𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗻𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝗲𝗺𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀”), 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗲 𝗘𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗦𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗮𝘆. 𝗙𝗼𝗿 𝗶𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝗱𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗴𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗼𝗽𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱. 𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝗻𝗼𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗲𝗹𝘀𝗲.
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
