Holy Week | Jesus Goes to War

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.

  • A PRAYER TO BEGIN HOLY WEEK
  • REGISTRATION & NOTE REGARDING HOLY WEEK SERVICES & EASTER MASS TIMES
  • 5 THINGS TO DO TO MAKE HOLY WEEK THE MOST IMPORTANT WEEK OF THE YEAR
  • SCHEDULE
  • HOLY WEEK INFOGRAPHIC
  • EACH DAY OF HOLY WEEK REFLECTION so as to help make Holy Week the most important week of the year

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.


A NOTE REGARDING HOLY WEEK SERVICES & EASTER MASS TIMES

  • Please note because of the demand for attendance and COVID restrictions, pre-registration online or calling in advance is required to attend any of the Holy Week services and Easter Masses.  This will ensure the maximum attendance at all liturgies while following Diocesan and state safety protocols.
  • For the Holy Week and Easter liturgies, ushers will have the lists of those who have pre-registered and will be checking-in attendees (like at our Christmas Masses).  If you did not pre-register, you will be asked to wait.
  • If those who have pre-registered have not checked-in at least 10 minutes prior to the Mass or service time, we will accommodate as many as we can of those who did not pre-register.
  • For Easter Sunday, there are two separate registrations for each of the Mass that is taking place either in the Church or Gym for the 9am, 11am, and 1pm Mass times.  There is NO 5:30pm Mass on Easter Sunday.

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.

 

 

 


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.

Monday of Holy Week | Make Holy Week The Most Important Week Of The Year
 
She has done what she could. She has anticipated anointing my body for burial. —Mark 14:8
 
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.

Judas’ heart is already turned toward evil, for he inquires about the nard “not because he cared for the poor but because he was a thief.” Because sin blinds the soul and impedes love and generosity, Mary’s extravagant charity appears wasteful to Judas, who will betray Jesus for thirty shekels. Mary reveals what it means to enjoy “the victory of justice”: to pour oneself out before the Lord in gratitude and adoration. Her selflessness reveals that she, like the Psalmist, has had her eyes opened and no longer lives in darkness or confinement: “The Lord is my light and my salvation.”
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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 Christ (Col 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 (Mt 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 Christ, 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. Christ 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, he it is 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.” (Jn 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.

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.

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.

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.

Holy Thursday | Laying it Down on Thursday

John’s Gospel is unique for many reasons, not the least of which is his account of the Last Supper. At first, the washing of feet seems like another instance of Jesus simply telling us to “love our neighbor”. Good as that may be, there’s much more behind the foot-washing than we might expect. Father James speaks about Jesus’ challenge to us this Holy Thursday is to hear His words again and again: “Do you realize what I have done for you?” For, when it comes to our Lord, we can always go deeper. _______________
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Today’s Readings
https://bit.ly/2OzETrw Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14 | 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 | John 13:1-15

Good Friday | Laying it down on Friday

How does God respond to evil? For the worldly-minded, insufficiently. But for the believer, perfectly. Jesus responds to the problem of evil with His very Body and Blood–bearing our guilt, our infirmities, and our offenses in Himself. (Is 52) If we let Jesus absorb these things on the Cross, then He can show us what it means for evil to be crushed and transfigured into glory. ______________
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Today’s Readings
https://bit.ly/39C4EPe Isaiah 52:1353:12 | Hebrew 4:14-16; 5:7-9 | John 18:1—19:42


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