Category: Lent & Holy Week

Holy Monday … set your sights on things above

You, then, beloved, if you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.

Then, as Christ rose from the dead by the glory of the Father, so you too may walk in newness of life. Then you may rejoice to pass from the secular pleasures and the consolations of the world, through the compunction and sadness that are of God to holy devotion and spiritual exultation, by the gift of the one who passed from this world to the Father and who deigns to draw us after himself, and to call us into Galilee, that he may show us himself, who is God over all, Blessed forever.

Sermons for Lent and the Easter Season
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux

At the door on Palm Sunday

In the ancient form of the Holy Week rites (i.e., prior to the Holy Week reforms of Pius XII in the early 1950’s) there is a very brief yet beautiful ceremony that occurs on Palm Sunday when the procession goes outside the church, the doors to the church are closed. The door of the church is then knocked on three times with the shaft of the processional cross. Having served the Mass, I can say it is a powerful and moving rite of which Benedict XVI spoke:

“In the old liturgy for Palm Sunday, the priest, arriving in front of the church, would knock loudly with the shaft of the processional cross on the door that was still closed; thereupon, it would be opened. This was a beautiful image of the mystery of Jesus Christ himself who, with the wood of his Cross, with the power of his love that is given, knocked from the side of the world at God’s door; on the side of a world that was not able to find access to God. With his Cross, Jesus opened God’s door, the door between God and men. Now it is open.”

Homily of Pope Benedict XVI
Palm Sunday, 2007

Blessed Holy Week — a week of great and divine drama!

In Christ we overcame the devil

In this First Week of Lent St Augustine gives us something worthy for our reflection: In Christ we suffered temptation, and in him we overcame the devil.

Hear, O God, my petition, listen to my prayer. Who is speaking? An individual, it seems. See if it is an individual: I cried to you from the ends of the earth while my heart was in anguish. Now it is no longer one person; rather, it is one in the sense that Christ is one, and we are all his members. What single individual can cry from the ends of the earth? The one who cries from the ends of the earth is none other than the Son’s inheritance. It was said to him: Ask of me, and I shall give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession. This possession of Christ, this inheritance of Christ, this body of Christ, this one Church of Christ, this unity that we are, cries from the ends of the earth. What does it cry? What I said before: Hear, O God, my petition, listen to my prayer; I cried out to you from the ends of the earth. That is, I made this cry to you from the ends of the earth; that is, on all sides.

Why did I make this cry? While my heart was in anguish. The speaker shows that he is present among all the nations of the earth in a condition, not of exalted glory but of severe trial.

Our pilgrimage on earth cannot be exempt from trial. We progress by means of trial. No one knows himself except through trial, or receives a crown except after victory, or strives except against an enemy or temptations.

The one who cries from the ends of the earth is in anguish, but is not left on his own. Christ chose to foreshadow us, who are his body, by means of his body, in which he has died, risen and ascended into heaven, so that the members of his body may hope to follow where their head has gone before.

He made us one with him when he chose to be tempted by Satan. We have heard in the gospel how the Lord Jesus Christ was tempted by the devil in the wilderness. Certainly Christ was tempted by the devil. In Christ you were tempted, for Christ received his flesh from your nature, but by his own power gained life for you; he suffered insults in your nature, but by his own power gained glory for you; therefore, he suffered temptation in your nature, but by his own power gained victory for you.

If in Christ we have been tempted, in him we overcame the devil. Do you think only of Christ’s temptations and fail to think of his victory? See yourself as tempted in him, and see yourself as victorious in him. He could have kept the devil from himself; but if he were not tempted he could not teach you how to triumph over temptation.

From a commentary on the psalms by Saint Augustine, bishop
(Ps. 60, 2-3: CCL 39, 766)

Mortification of the flesh for the good

As the body is to be chastised at the beginning so that sin may not reign in it and we may overcome temptations, so too when the temptations have been overcome we must persevere in the same practices not only for fear of falling back but also out of desire for progress.
 
Thus through the mortification of the flesh the spirit may thrive the better and, the lighter and more slender the fetters which attach it, the more freely it may rise to spiritual things.
 
Blessed Guerric of Igny
Liturgical Sermons

Spiritual Reading for Lent 2018

We are at the beginning the season of Great Lent. May I commend to you these titles for your spiritual reading and meditation (listed in no particular order):

Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent

Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon:  Meditations on the Last Words of  Jesus from the Cross 

Flannery O’Connor, A Prayer Journal 

John Behr, Becoming Human

Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God

Jean-Pierre de Caussade,  The Sacrament of the Present Moment

Frederica Mathewes-Green, The Illumined Heart

Frank Sheed, Theology for Beginners

Peter Kreeft, Your Questions, God’s Answers

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Pope Benedict XVI, Holy Days: Meditations on the Feasts, Fasts, and Other Solemnities of the Church 

Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance Into Jerusalem To The Resurrection 

Which books would you recommend for Lent?

Sorrowful Mother

 

“Do not lament me, O Mother, seeing me in the tomb, the Son conceived in the womb without seed, for I shall arise and be glorified with eternal glory as God. I shall exalt all who magnify thee in faith and in love.”

~Ode IX, Holy Saturday Matins/Paschal Nocturns
(Icon of the Mater Dolorosa by the hand of Cheryl Pituch, Robert, LA)

Good Friday

 

“What is it to believe?” asked the Welsh poet, Waldo Williams. He answers, “Giving solace / Until deliverance arrives.”

Today, Good Friday, we come to a deeper aware that “This is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

By your passion and cross we are, indeed, brought to communion.

Entering the Sacred Triduum

“This is a warning to all Catholics & Orthodox. Holy Week is Serious Business for serious disciples of Jesus Christ. The Sacred Rites (aka “ceremonies”) are not incidentally or accidentally lengthly. They are deliberately lush with the symbols of Worship at the heart of which is the Lord Jesus the Christ Himself. Entering into the Mysteries of the Triduum (Holy Thursday/Good Friday/Holy Saturday) sweeps us from lenten preparation and plunges us into the waters of Baptism where we drown to worldly allurements and arise to Easter Joy. These are deep waters, still waters where the testimony of the apostles and disciples churn among the testimonies of evangelists, martyrs, monks, nuns, and Households in Christ made holy through wives and husbands dedicated to Christian Living among truly heathen tribes and cultures. Here we join this communion of saints to refresh our souls, rededicate our bodily existence to the announcement of the Gospel — In Christ, God and Man are reconciled. May the Blessings of this Holy Week drive from us whatever is insipid and feeble. May it revest us with such Grace that will make us “strong, loving, wise” witnesses to Christ in this place and age.”

Courtesy of Fr. William Seifert

The week we call great and holy

We call the week great, not because it has a greater number of hours – other weeks having many more hours, after all – not because it has more days, there being the same number of days in this and the other weeks, of course. So why do we call this week great? Because in it many ineffable good things come our way: in it protracted war is concluded, death is eliminated, curses are lifted, the devil’s tyranny is relaxed, his pomps are despoiled, the reconciliation of God and man is achieved, heaven is made accessible, human beings are brought to resemble angels, those things which were at odds are united, the wall is laid low, the bar is removed, the God of peace having brought peace to things on high and things on earth. This, then, is the reason we call the week great, because in it the Lord lavished on us such a plethora of gifts. This is the reason many people intensify their fasting as well as their sacred watching and vigils, and practice almsgiving, thus showing by their behavior the regard they have for the week. After all, since the Lord in this week has regaled us with such great goods, how are we not obliged to demonstrate our reverence and regard as far as we can?”

St. John Chrysostome