THE LITURGY of HOLY WEEK

Fr. CLIFFORD HOWELL, S.J.,
explains what it should mean to each of us WHEN Holy Week comes round, does it make any difference to you? Does it mean to you merely that Sunday's Mass is abnormally long, with its distribution of Palms and its reading of the Passion : that you feel you ' ought" to get to Cornmunioo on Thursday, and go to Stations on Friday, and again to Communion on Easter Sunday? If it means all that to you, it is better than nothing. Yet there is so much more to it than that !
How about trying, this year (which, after all, is a " Holy Year") to get at the deeper meaning of Holy Week and Easter, to understand the message which God sends to you through His Church, and let that message have some real impact on your mind and conduct ?
It will cost you a little trouble and a little (very little) money. But you'll find it so worth while!
The little money is for the purchase of the texts (with translation) of the morning services for Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday.
If you have a Holy Week Book or a Daily Missal you have already what is needed. If not, write to the C.T.S., 28a Ashley Place, London, S,W.I.
They do not seem to issue the Maundy Thursday text : but the other three arc available with comments by Fr. Martindale. The whole lot would cost you less than half-acrown.
Read them in your home
The next thing is to give a little trouble to the reading of these texts in your honte.
This should 'be possible for every person of goodwill, even for those who are truly unable to attend the Maundy Thursday and Holy Saturday services. Of course•you will be at Mass on Palm Sunday : and as Good Friday is a public holiday you will at least be able to go to the Mass of the Presanctified too.
The point I am urging is not to go unprepared. Make sure you have the text to follow : and you will get the most out of it if you have done a bit of thinking about that text at home, before you come to the actual service in church. For then you will be so busy " following " that you may not appreciate a number of points which, with preparation. you would find very helpful and striking.
THE thing to bear in mind is that these. services are not private prayers of individuals: they are the public and official prayer of the Church. But the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ; and so her prayer is sometimes art expression of the prayer of Christ, her Head : sometimes of her own prayer, sometimes she expresses the prayer of us members.
What you read, then, in these services is best understood sometimes as being uttered by Our Lord, sometimes by the Church, sometimes by us. A bit like the Offertory-verse of Palm Sunday obviously fits, so to speak, Our Lord Himself, whereas the Secret prayer which follows just as obviously _fits us and not Him. But the Introit is very rich in meaning : its words might come from Our Lord facing His Passion, or from the Church facing persecution, or from any one of us faced with the misery of his own sin.
Accompanying Our Lord
By this intelligent appreciation you witl be able to enter more and more into the spirit of the services, and form in yourselves that viewpoint and outlook which Our Lord expounds to us through His Church.
IN Holy Week we are meant to accompany Our Lord through His Passion, conforming our minds and hearts to His, so that with Him we may also enter into the joy of the Resurrection. There is indeed a contrast between Holy Week and Eastertide expressed in sadness and joy, suffering and triumph; but the lesson the Church teaches us is that Christian sorrow ix not utter and hopeless dejection: Christian suffering is not cruel and meaningless torture. The sorrow leads to joy, the suffering leads to triumph just as surely as the Passion of Christ led to His Resurrection. For. in Christ, one is inseparable from the other.
Hence, even in the celebration of the Passion and Death of Christ, the Church constantly brings in the theme of joy and of triumph.
Palm Sunday leads us into Holy Week with joyous shouts of Hosanna and the triumphal entry of the "King of Glory."
Maundy Thursday Mass begins with the reminder that " It is for us to glory in the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ"; the Offertory tells us that "The power of the Lord hath triumphed ": the main theme of the morning service, gratitude for and exultation in Christ's gift of the Holy Eucharist, is fittingly expressed in the triumphant Partge lingua-" Sing, my tongue, the Saviour's glory." And look at Good Friday's service.
It is, of course, concerned with the Passion and Death of Our Lord. and there is much that expresses sorrow. 'like the " Reproaches ": but even in these the Church sings " We worship Thy Cross, 0 Lord; and we praise and glorify Thy holy Resurrection; for, behold, by the wood of the Cross came joy into the whole world !" And the Cross is venerated not as an instrument of torture but as the Standard of the Triumphant King Who reigned from His Cross.
The Holy Saturday service really belongs to Easter itself.
It has got out of its rightful place during Holy Saturday night, into Saturday morning a transposition which stultifies a great deal of its
meaning. But, from the opening prayer for the Blessing of Fire, through the rapture of the Ersuita, the elation of the Blessing of the Font, to the joyous Mass with its restored Alleluias and its Vespere autem Sabbati its spirit is filled with jubilation and triumph.
The Church's viewpoint
THIS is a lesson we much need.
For the viewpoint taught by the Church is so very different from that held by most of those among whom we have to live.
There is constant danger that we may be infected by their outlook.
To them suffering is an unmitigated evil-a horrible, repellent cruel thing. The incurably sick. according to modern pagans. should he put out of their pairt-they ought to be killed. The man who is unhappily married, they say, should he freed of his shackles by divorce. The couple who might have to reduce their standard of living if they became parents should enjoy their pleasure while evading responsibility. Pleasure, say they, is ever to be sought : pain ever to be avoided. But " It is for us to glory in the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom is our salvation, life • and resurrection."
We know that the sufferings of Christ led to His triumph and glory. So also the sufferings of men, if borne in union with Christ, can enable them to share in His triumph and glory. The incurably sick man, imitating Our Lord in patience. selflessly offering up his pains in supplication for others. can attain to a sanctity he would never have reached in health.
The man whose married life is wrecked and yet remains faithful to his marriage vows. or the couple who deny themselves in order to keep God's laws arc all, in their way, sharing in the Cross of Christ and will in due course he given an eternal reward. Nay more they can all have a certain kind of reward even here.
For the willing acceptance of suffering as a sharing of the Cross of Christ takes away all bitterness.
it is possible to suffer and yet to remain happy,
The true follower of Christ does really glory in the Cross of Christ; he contrasts the smallness of his own suffering with the weight of the Cross borne by His Divine Master, and feels privileged that he has been judged worthy to walk, even with a comparatively light burden, in the footsteps of his thorn-crowned King. In loving faith he follows his Lord. and sees that the end of the journey is not Calvary. That is but a stage on the way. Good Friday is succeeded by Easter. Death is swallowed up in victory.
No one who accepts suffering in that spirit can be unhappy. That is what we learn in Holy Week-the solution of the " Problem of Evil."
Next week Fr. Howell will continue his analysis into the Liturgy of Easter Sunday.