Preparing for Holy Week

Where has this Lent gone? We are already approaching Holy Week and the celebration of the most solemn days of the Church’s liturgical year!

Beginning with Palm Sunday, we accompany Jesus during his last week on earth, preparing for the celebration of his Resurrection on Easter Sunday. One of the most beautiful things about the liturgy of the Church, especially during Holy Week, is that we can participate in the actual events of the Paschal Mystery as they happen.

In the liturgies of the three days leading up to the Triduum, which begins on Holy Thursday, we encounter two central figures in the Gospel readings at Mass: Jesus and Judas. The Gospel passages lead us to reflect on Judas’s betrayal of Jesus, and the ways in which we too betray Jesus in our own lives. We anticipate the moment of Judas’s final turning away from the Lord and get a foretaste of the bitter fruit of his despair and darkness.

On Monday of Holy Week, Judas protests the beautiful gesture of tender love, which Mary of Bethany lavishes on Jesus, saying the costly oil she uses to anoint Jesus’ feet could have been put to better use than this wasteful expression of her love for Jesus.

On Tuesday, we read and reflect on a scene from the Last Supper in which Jesus foretells Judas’s betrayal and Peter’s denial of Jesus later that night. 

Finally, on Wednesday, the Church offers us the passage in which Judas arranges Jesus’ betrayal in exchange for 30 pieces of silver.

These are the events that we are invited to reflect upon as we prepare to enter our commemorations of the Paschal Mystery on Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday. 

What significant contrasts! And what an important reminder. The way the Church juxtaposes these events is a reminder of why the Paschal Mystery is so necessary. We are being shown that the events of the Triduum are not just the result of, but also God’s response to, Judas’s act of betrayal.

Every day of our lives, you and I betray the Lord by our sins.

We reject the Lord’s love for us and decide we want to do things our own way and for ourselves rather than for the Lord and for those around us. Left to our own devices, we fall just as easily as Judas fell. Each day we decide for ourselves that there are things in our lives more important than our love for God. We give in to temptation, choosing darkness over the light of Christ. We seek to advance ourselves seeking our own glory, even if it means the Lord must take a back seat. 

It is precisely because of these sins that we need a savior.

Jesus’ death on the cross is God’s response to our betrayals. He gave his life on the cross because he loves us even in our sin. He redeems us, offers us forgiveness and invites us into new life – and renewed friendship.

Judas could have received this gift of God’s mercy. If he had repented of his betrayal, Jesus would have welcomed him back into his friendship with open arms. Instead, Judas gave in to despair. He allowed himself to believe the lie that his sin could never be forgiven; that Jesus had stopped loving him because of the gravity of his betrayal.

This was the ultimate lie of the Evil One and the downfall of Judas.
 
We are given the opportunity to do what Judas could not bring himself to do. We can acknowledge the truth that there is no sin that puts us beyond the reach of God’s mercy. We can allow the Lord to love us even when we have denied and betrayed him. We can be renewed by God’s mercy rather than give in to despair and surrender to darkness.

As we enter Holy Week, I invite you, with the help of God’s grace, to renew your confidence in God’s mercy expressed in these saving mysteries. 

Participate in these sacred liturgies with humble awareness of your own need for God’s mercy and allow them to transform you, so that the Lord’s Resurrection can bring true renewal and an experience of new life.