Dear friends in Christ

Holy Week is the most significant time of the Christian year and the Paschal Triduum—Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday—form the very core of the Christian Mystery, as we celebrate the Passion, Death and Resurrection of the Lord. The days of Lent have been preparing us for these coming days. Many Catholics make a concerted effort to spend more time in intimate union with Jesus, as we accompany Him through these events of our salvation. In fact, there is nowhere else for us to do this more authentically than in our liturgy. While the ceremonies of Holy Week are full of pathos, they are so much more than mere drama. The ceremonies of Holy Week—and Catholic liturgy in general—are neither liturgical theatre nor the belief that Jesus suffers, dies and rises over and over again. Rather, the liturgy makes present for us again, in signs and symbols perceptible to our senses, these saving events. By the power of the Holy Spirit in the Church we make present again the Last Supper, the Passion and Death of Jesus and His Resurrection. We are there as really and as truly present as were the Apostles and Mary. This Palm Sunday we accompany Jesus on his entry into the City of Jerusalem as He goes up to begin the work of our Redemption. On Maundy Thursday we sit with the Apostles at the Last Supper—the first Mass—as he inaugurates the Priesthood of the New Covenant; this is made present in the liturgical rite of the Mandatum, when Jesus bends down to wash the feet of His first Bishops and Priests. On Good Friday we follow Jesus to Calvary as the Sacrifice of the Lamb is consummated. On Easter Day we rejoice at the new life Jesus manifests: our hope of Heaven!

May we live this Week with devotion and love, conscious that Jesus went through all of it for me!

Msgr Kevin Hale