Thoughts on Holy Week

I have always loved Holy Week. When I was growing up, there seemed to be so much anticipation for it. At school, we were normally on Spring Break, but if we weren’t, we attended Mass each day of the week. We would have Mass on Monday mornings to begin Holy Week and then Stations of the Cross in the afternoon on Tuesday, Benediction on Wednesday, Holy Thursday service on Thursday and off on Friday for Good Friday.

I LOVED being in church. It was like visiting your best friend’s house – warm and inviting. The prayers and music were always beautiful…  It was a happy place. Then Holy Week would come and as the week progressed, the climate would shift from a place of happiness and comfort to a place of pain and darkness.

Even today, I feel a knot form in my stomach in anticipation of Holy Thursday tomorrow. After the Mass celebrating the feast of the Last Supper, the altar is stripped and the host is removed from the church. This is the only time when you can walk from church without bowing or genuflecting as you leave because Christ has left the building and that is all the church is now – a building. I try to leave as soon as I can to escape the cold and eerie feeling that lingers at that moment.

It’s hard to imagine a church without the warmth of Christ’s love and sacrifice inside, yet for three days (technically 2, but I don’t attend Holy Saturday services), the entire world feels like God has stepped away.  It’s as if He is trying to show us how empty we would all be without Him and He is right. Just like the empty church building, a world without God is a terrifying and empty place. Thankfully, we only experience it for a very brief time.

I can only imagine what it must have felt like 2,000 years ago when the Apostles and Jesus’ mother, Mary, witnessed the arrest and torture of Jesus following the Last Supper.  How lost they must have felt and what questions they must have asked. Surely there were doubts flying through even Mary’s mind as she watched her son be interrogated and beaten that night. How scared and helpless she must have felt knowing the prophecy was happening right in front of her and there was no way she could protect or save Jesus.  

Holy Thursday and Good Friday are the two toughest days for me. They are both emotionally taxing from the moment Judas betrays Christ until he is laid in the tomb, but at the same time, Holy Week offers me a ray of hope and opportunity – the opportunity to face my fears and inadequacies with an open heart and the hope for a new spiritual beginning.