An amazing masterpiece collection of many of the teachings of the Catholic Church is The Catechism of the Catholic Church. I’m frequently moved when reading The Catechism at how the power of the Spirit is truly at work in the teaching office of the Church! The same deep, powerful convictions I experience when reading scripture, I also experience reading The Catechism, which is actually loaded with scripture too. So I’d like to share some insights from The Catechism that can help us profoundly experience Holy Week!
First, when it comes to the events that we celebrate at the sacred liturgies on Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter, God – through His Church – wants us to know that we are doing more than remembering, or playacting. The Catechism teaches that: “Christian Liturgy not only recalls the events that saved us but actualizes them, makes them present. The Paschal mystery of Christ is celebrated, not repeated. It is the celebrations that are repeated, and in each celebration there is an outpouring that makes the unique mystery present.” (Paragraph 1104) And: “To God, all moments of time are present in their immediacy. (Paragraph 600). I’d like to invite you to read that paragraph several times and meditate on it after the payoff pitch below. J
While real events have occurred in the past, God mysteriously remains both outside of time, and permeating time as well, holding all things in being. God desires to allow you and I to experience His passionate love for us by allowing us to enter in to the events that saved us and that God’s Holy Spirit actualizes and makes present in a unique way. This is a mystery of love and an invitation from God…will you answer? He wants us to experience Palm Sunday with new eyes….”Hosanna!” He wants to bring you to the last supper on Holy Thursday and help you hear with a new heart, “This is my body, given up for you.” He wants you to join Him in the Garden on Holy Thursday night and understand that He sweat blood for you out of love for you. He wants you to have a gut-level experience of His passion and death on the Cross on Good Friday and know that it was done for you. He wants you to thrill to the first beat of His sacred heart on the morning of the Resurrection, and to recognize that it was – and still is – beating for YOU. Come Holy Spirit, teach us how to pray & help us enter deeply into Holy Week!
God bless you friends,
Fr. Patrick