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HOLY WEEK 

ND SO WE COME to the most important time for us after our efforts during Lent: Holy Week – the week of Our Lord’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem, the week of the Last Supper, the week of the betrayal of Jesus, the week of His Passion and Crucifixion. The week of ups and downs of emotions – but mostly, the week of intense sorrow.

Many people spread their cloaks on the road, others greenery which they had cut in the fields. And those who went in front and those who followed were all shouting, “Hosanna! Blessings on him who comes in the name of the Lord”

On Palm Sunday the Church celebrates Christ’s entrance into Jerusalem to accomplish his paschal mystery. At the 9am Mass there  will   be a procession from  the  Parish  Hall to the Church.

Those attending that Mass should gather in the Hall by 8.50am ready to get their palms and join in the joyful procession. On Monday we read about Mary Magdalen anointing the feet of Jesus with costly ointment and wiping them with her hair. On Tuesday, Jesus tells Peter that he will deny him three times. On Wednesday we see Judas making a deal with the chief priests and receiving thirty pieces of silver.

That brings us to the beginning of the Triduum – the three days that begin on Holy Thursday with the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. On this day Jesus gave himself to his enemies, but he also gave himself to us in the sacrament of his body and blood.   However,  we  who  long  to receive  him in that  Sacrament must be ready to say with Christ, ‘This is my body which is given up for you’ as he asks us to imitate his own action, when he washes the feet of his disciples.

If I, then, the Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you should wash each other’s feet. I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you.

                                                  Good Friday

He was Tourtured

We come in sorrow and depart in silence. We listen to the words of scripture and try to understand the true meaning of his sufferings and the mind that was in him. We will never, ever, be able to understand the mind of God, but we do know that Love was nailed to the cross and that it was the means of our redemption.

On Good Friday, at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, we gather in the church where the altar is bare and the tabernacle is open and empty. We hear the words from Isaiah about the suffering servant who was pierced for our faults. In the Letter to the Hebrews we hear how Jesus obeyed through suffering and became, for all who obey him, the source of eternal salvation. We join in the reading of the Passion of Our Lord from John’s Gospel and  remember the  suffering and pain that Jesus bore for us and for our sins.

They then took charge of Jesus, and carrying his own cross he went out of the city to the place of the skull or, as it was called in Hebrew, Golgotha, where they crucified him.

He was crucified

After reading the Passion we offer prayers of intercession, then the Priest says ‘This is the wood of the cross, on which hung the Saviour of the world’ and the people respond ‘Come, let us worship.’ and everyone quietly makes their way to venerate the Cross. Although the Sacraments are not celebrated on Good Friday, we are able to receive Holy Communion, before all leave in silence.

At the place where he had been crucified there was a garden, and in this garden there was a new tomb in which no-one had yet been buried. They laid Jesus there.

He was placed in a tomb