Holy Week has nearly arrived. For many of us, this comes as a welcome relief. Sacrifice, mortification, and suffering do not come easily. We’d rather carry on in our comfortable lives than stretch ourselves until it hurts for love of Him who was stretched on a Cross for us. As we prepare our souls to accept and surrender to the weight of His love before entering into the lighthearted celebration of the Easter season, it behooves us to pause each day with some degree of solemn appreciation for Him who was glorified by way of surrender and death.

May our death, too – both literally and mystically – bear the fruit that remains long after we have passed into our eternal reward.

Wednesday, April 5

“Jesus said to those Jews who believed in him, ‘If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’” (John 8:31-32)

How often do we wrestle with the question of Pilate: “What is truth?” As he faced Jesus, who is Truth incarnate, he could not answer that deep burning in his heart to make sense of the confusion that surrounded his position politically, as well as the spiritual turmoil he could not reconcile with. We, too, grapple with knowing truth. We seek clarity and often discover that life is full of empty holes and gray spaces that do not delineate between what is true and what is false.

Yet Jesus reminds us as we approach the holiest of weeks that we must remain in Him. If we do so, especially by rooting ourselves often in Scripture study and the Sacraments, we will understand truth by way of the illumination of the Holy Spirit He gives us. Truth is not relative. It is not mere philosophy. Truth is a Person. If we seek Jesus, we will know truth, live in it, and be free from the shackles of our sin.

Thursday, April 6

“Look to the Lord in his strength; seek to serve him constantly. Recall the wondrous deeds that he has wrought.” (Psalm 105:4-5)

Jesus, in His humanity, experienced weakness – of body, of spirit, of mind. When we are depleted, exhausted, and at the end of our ropes in life, we can recall the journey to Calvary that demonstrated Jesus’ manifestation of human weakness. Yet in that weakness, He was fortified by the Father’s grace. So must we turn to God all the more when we are tired, overwhelmed, and feeling lost.

The weakness of the human spirit can be rectified by serving God fervently and steadfastly. It often begins with gratitude. When we are enveloped in the chasm of darkness and all seems bleak, we must remember the ways God has answered our prayers in the past. If we do this, we will be reminded that He continues to faithfully guide us, even and especially in our darkest hours. Just when we believe all is for naught, God will grant us respite in some way. He is our strength and song.

Friday, April 7

“The Lord is with me, like a mighty champion: my persecutors will stumble, they will not triumph.” (Jeremiah 20:11)

The depth of loneliness is not easily remedied by human consolation. Even if we do not have any known enemies, even if we are not specifically estranged from anyone or engaged in some sort of misunderstanding, we experience the chasm of loneliness. We do not feel like victors. We do not believe that those who have hurt or wounded us will ever come to understand our sorrow.

What does it mean to be a champion? I think of the “running the race” metaphor, despite the fact that I am not a runner. The one who completes the race, despite setbacks and inevitable stumbling blocks, is a mighty champion. He has persevered to the finish, swept in to overcome his weary flesh, and the reward is his victory.

The only victor we have is God. We cannot become champions of greatness on our own. It seems that our experiences of loneliness, persecution, and sorrow are meant to cultivate a deeper dependency on God for everything. We cannot abandon all that we are or all that we have without this understanding that, without God as our mighty champion, we are nothing and have nothing.

Saturday, April 8

“I will turn their mourning into joy, I will console and gladden them after their sorrow.” (Jeremiah 31:13)

Approaching Holy Week, we somberly recall the suffering of Jesus. Many of us will bring our own misery to Him as an offering of love. Every tear we shed as a gift for Jesus, every heartache and betrayal brought to Him with the intention of uniting all to His Sacred Wounds, draws us away from our own pain and into the compassion of loving Jesus for His own sake.

What must Jesus have felt as His time drew near to enter fully into His Passion? Was He in mourning, lamenting and grieving over the friendships He’d made and the life He’d lived? Did He feel completely alone, knowing that even His apostles would not fully grasp the value of His death until much later?

We may wonder if Jesus found comfort in the prophet’s words, “I will turn their mourning into joy.” He knew that suffering was meritless without the resurrection, yet His humanity did not want to undergo the unfathomable torment that was necessary for the joy, consolation, and celebration of the resurrection.

We don’t often realize what God is doing in our lives, much like the apostles. We can’t see the fulfillment of God’s promises for us when we are in the midst of an intense trial. Yet Jeremiah reminds us that joy comes in the morning and light after the dawn. It is our hope and treasure to cling to this hope when we are near despair.

Sunday, April 9 – Palm Sunday

“The Lord God has given me a well-trained tongue, that I might know how to speak to the weary a word that will rouse them. Morning after morning he opens my ear that I may hear; and I have not rebelled, have not turned back.” (Isaiah 50:4-5)

Sometimes we are the weary ones who need a refreshing and encouraging word to uplift us, but often we are the ones who are called to be God’s mouthpiece to others. It’s always a bit awkward at first to “speak to the weary,” because we aren’t sure what to say that will not be taken as offense. It’s hard to gauge whether or not a person in pain is open enough to receive words spoken in love.

Yet the Holy Spirit guides us on what to say, when, and how to say it. At times, we are meant to be silent and listen to someone who is struggling. At other times, however, we are called to speak up and to do so without fear of judgment, only to respond in love. Always we are to accompany those who feel forsaken, used, and forgotten. This is what it means to journey alongside another, to enter into his or her life experience, and to be the mouthpiece of God that will rouse them into hope once again.

Monday, April 10 – Monday of Holy Week

“Wait for the Lord with courage; be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord.” (Psalm 27:14)

Waiting is likely one of the most difficult aspects of the human condition. I’ve never met anyone who enjoys waiting – in traffic, in the waiting room at a doctor’s office, for an important phone call, or for a long-awaited visit with a long-lost friend or relative. We despise waiting, whether it be for dreaded news or something joyful. We’d rather just know right away what’s going to happen and when.

Waiting for God is a different matter, however. God often asks us to wait, often for painfully extended periods of time without reprieve. Holy Week reminds us that waiting is part of our own passion experience. We wait for death, but ultimately we wait for what comes after death, which is new life. We know that, in order to become a new creation in Christ, we must undergo many trials that we’d rather bypass altogether. These are necessary, vital components to entering the joy of eternal bliss.

With courage and fidelity, we can wait for God, regardless of how long He asks us to hold off on taking action. This week especially, we can use our time of meditating on Jesus’ Passion to grow in patience and anticipate the joy of resurrection with hope that lingers in the midst of suffering.

Tuesday, April 11 – Tuesday of Holy Week

“You are my hope, O Lord; my trust, O God, from my youth. On you I depend from birth; from my mother’s womb you are my strength.” (Psalm 71:5)

Right now I am pregnant with our third child. Each pregnancy has given me space to ponder the beauty and grace of offering my body for another human life to begin its existence in this world. It’s an incredibly humbling privilege and honor to bear a child in your womb, especially when you know that it is truly God who ordained this little soul to be formed from a tiny seed.

If we consider for a moment that our own beginnings were fashioned in our mothers’ wombs, we might realize that life itself would be impossible for us, were it not for God sustaining us. There are so many statistical reasons why our lives are a miracle from the very beginning, one of which is that the formation of a tiny baby is incredibly fragile and prone to death. It is God who has given us strength from our mother’s womb, from the beginning of our lives.

Knowing this, then, we should not falter in trusting God. He ordained our lives for a specific purpose. We are called to something that only we can do, and we must cleave to the hope that He will fulfill the work He has begun in us.

Wednesday, April 12 – Wednesday of Holy Week

“My appointed time draws near.” (Matthew 26:18)

I once received a Christmas card from my godfather that had a photograph of Jesus on the Cross. At the time, it seemed a little macabre and even odd to showcase the death of Jesus when we were supposed to be anticipating the joy of His birth. But as I thought more deeply about the message, I realize it was likely the most important one of all: Jesus was born so that He would die for us. That is the sole reason the Father sent Him to earth.

We always think of Lent as being the most appropriate time to really meditate about Jesus’ Passion, but throughout the rest of the liturgical calendar, we seldom give it much thought. It seems fitting that we should, in some way, celebrate Lent all year long. In fact, it should be very much a part of our everyday prayer – to recall with fond appreciation and immense love that Jesus was born so that we might be born to eternal life. And life has a high price.

As the “appointed time draws near” for entering into Jesus’ death, we might do well to ask Him how we can console His Heart every day from this point onward. It is our gift of gratitude for the price of love.

What are you doing to transform your Holy Week this year? Share in the comments!