Holy Week – Communio

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

Christians should NOT do a Seder

Lazar Berman’s essay published today on The Times of Israel, “‘Trying to undo history”: A Catholic scholar reflects on Christian Seders“.

Berman and Fr. Murray Watson discuss the reality of the Seder and illustrate why it is inappropriate for Christians to do something so out of context from the their religious experience.

I have long been opposed to Christians performing the Jewish Passover Seder. In fact, I have used the words “outrageous” to express my dismay. Christians who do so, in my considered opinion, are very presumptuous and not too educated in the theology undergirding the Seder and the difference Baptism and belief in Jesus makes for the Christian. Recall that Jesus is the NEW Passover, something rejected by Jews.

In faith, we share some important beliefs with Jews; we should respect their developed theology as they should respect ours. Theological and cultural barbarisms avoided.

If a Christian wants to experience a Seder then that person ought to do the study required to understand AND swing an invitation from a Jewish household to participate in a Passover Seder. Set time aside to sit back and thoughtfully consider educative value of the experience and see know your theology! I appreciate what Berman and Watson are saying. We ought to attend.

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

Maundy Thursday

In John 13:34-35 we read: I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

“Jesus represents the whole of his saving ministry in one symbolic act” ….It “signifies the whole of Jesus’ saving ministry”…”this humble gesture expressing the entire ministry of Jesus’ life and death…”

(J. Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, p. 57, 72, 74; see “The Washing of the Feet” pp 53-75)

Spy Wednesday

We call today Spy Wednesday (the Wednesday of Holy Week) because it is the day on which the gospel reading for Mass (Matthew 26:14-25) is the one which speaks of Judas Iscariot acts as a spy for the Sanhedrin. The act of spying earned Judas 30 pieces of silver and thus he betrayed Jesus.

Pope Benedict once said, “Judas is neither a master of evil nor the figure of a demoniacal power of darkness but rather a sycophant who bows down before the anonymous power of changing moods and current fashion. But it is precisely this anonymous power that crucified Jesus, for it was anonymous voices that cried, “Away with him! Crucify him!”

In another place the emeritus Pope wrote:

“His second tragedy — after the betrayal — is that he can no longer believes in forgiveness. His remorse turns into despair. Now he sees only himself and his darkness; he no longer sees the light of Jesus, which can illumine and overcome the darkness. He shows us the wrong type of remorse: the type that is unable to hope, that sees only its own darkness, the type that is destructive and in no way authentic. Genuine remorse is marked by the certainty of hope born of faith in the superior power of the light that was made flesh in Jesus.” (Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, 69)

Let us pray as Saint Paul said: “At the name of Jesus every knee should bend…to the glory of God the Father.”

Holy Saturday from an Orthodox perspective

Holy Saturday is one of the mis-understood days the sacred Triduum. As a church body, we just don’t have a firm grasp of what Mother Church has to say and experience. Several theologians, for example, Popes John Paul and Benedict, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Richard John Neuhaus have all tried to focus our attention on what God has done for us on Holy Saturday. Father Alexander Schmemann, an orthodox liturgical theologian and priest, is one of my favorite liturgical authors. Sadly, he died of cancer many years ago, but his work continues to bear much fruit, as I hope you will appreciate by reading the following entry. Since today is Holy Saturday for the Orthodox Church, I am offering for our meditation (a review?) the events of our salvation.

Great and Holy Saturday is the day on which Christ reposed in the tomb. The Church calls this day the Blessed Sabbath.

“The great Moses mystically foreshadowed this day when he said:

God blessed the seventh day.

This is the blessed Sabbath

This is the day of rest,

on which the only-begotten Son of God rested from all His works….” (Vesperal Liturgy of Holy Saturday)

By using this title the Church links Holy Saturday with the creative act of God. In the initial account of creation as found in the Book of Genesis, God made man in His own image and likeness. To be truly himself, man was to live in constant communion with the source and dynamic power of that image: God. Man fell from God. Now Christ, the Son of God through whom all things were created, has come to restore man to communion with God. He thereby completes creation. All things are again as they should be. His mission is consummated. On the Blessed Sabbath He rests from all His works.

THE TRANSITION

Holy Saturday is a neglected day in parish life. Few people attend the Services. Popular piety usually reduces Holy Week to one day–Holy Friday. This day is quickly replaced by another–Easter Sunday. Christ is dead and then suddenly alive. Great sorrow is suddenly replaced by great joy. In such a scheme Holy Saturday is lost.

In the understanding of the Church, sorrow is not replaced by joy; it is transformed into joy. This distinction indicates that it is precisely within death that Christ continues to effect triumph.

Continue reading Holy Saturday from an Orthodox perspective

The Blessing of the Easter Food on Holy Saturday

Bless, O Lord, this creation that it may be a means of salvation to the human race, and grant that, by the invocation of Thy Holy Name, it may promote health of body, and the salvation of souls in those who partake of it, through Christ our Lord.

[The Blessing of the Easter Food] is a wonderful tradition in Russia and the Slavic countries. On Holy Saturday and Easter itself, the people bring baskets of food to the church to be blessed….The baskets are filled with colored eggs, butter, salo (fatback, like bacon), different kinds of stuffed rolls, candies and cakes. But above all there is pascha, a specially baked cake, rich in eggs, topped with icing, and decorated with candy crosses or Easter figures. It’s the first thing the family eats after the Easter services. The Easter basket is an integral part of the tradition, for in order to observe the feast properly, people fast all very strictly during Holy Week and abstain from all meat.

Fr. Walter Ciszek, S.J.

With God in Russia

God speaks through the Cross and responds to evil, God’s word is Mercy

The Cross is the word through which God has responded to evil in the world. Sometimes it may seem as though God does not react to evil, as if he is silent. And yet, God has spoken, he has replied, and his answer is the Cross of Christ: a word which is love, mercy, forgiveness. It is also reveals a judgment, namely that God, in judging us, loves us. Remember this: God judges, loving. If I embrace his love then I am saved, if I refuse it, then I am condemned, not by him, but my own self, because God never condemns, he only loves and saves. Dear brothers and sisters, the word of the Cross is also the answer which Christians offer in the face of evil, the evil that continues to work in us and around us. Christians must respond to evil with good, taking the Cross upon themselves as Jesus did.

Pope Francis

Via Crucis 2013

excerpt of a message

The Crucified Savior of Humanity

Eric Gill, Crucifixion and host 1915.

Francis’ homily for Holy Thursday 2013

Lent ends and the sacred Triduum begins with the Mass of Our Lord’s Supper, with the rite of Washing of Feet (known also as the Mandatum). In Rome, the Pope offered Mass at the Casal del Marmo, an inner city detention center. In the chapel dedicated to the title of “Father of Mercies,” were 40 young detainees gathered around him for Mass, 12 youth, Catholics and non-Christians, 2 of whom were young women and 2 Muslims, had their feet washed by the Pontiff. Concelebrating the Mass were Cardinal Agostino Vallini (the Pope’s Vicar for the Diocese of Rome), Archbishop Giovanni Angelo Becciu (‘Substitute for General Affairs of the Secretary of State), Monsignor Alfred Xuereb, (Chaplain to the Casal del Marmo, and papal secretary), 2 deacons, one deacon from the Seminario San Carlo (the Seminary of the Fraternity of St Charles Borromeo) and another, Brother Roi Jenkins Albuen, a Capuchin of the “Addolorata” with Father Gaetano Greco. Also there were two young seminarians from the Roman Seminary with the assistant chaplain, Colombian Father Pedro Acosta.

Pay attention to what the Pope says!!!! Also, some photos.

Here’s Vatican Radio transcript and translation of the Holy Father’s unscripted homily:

“This is moving, Jesus washes the feet of his disciples. Peter understands nothing. He refuses but Jesus explains to him. Jesus, God did this, and He Himself explains it to the disciples.. ‘Do you realize what I have done for you? You call me ‘teacher’ and ‘master,’ and rightly so, for indeed I am. If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet. I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do’.

Continue reading Francis’ homily for Holy Thursday 2013