The Holy Week and the power of liturgy

The Holy Week is undeniably the most important week of the Church's calendar. All the weeks of the year, even time in general, find their fulfillment and perfection in the Holy Week, especially in its Easter Triduum that caps it.

And that's because it's in the Holy Week that the Christian world, in a real but mysterious way, witnesses and even participates in the much-needed transition from spiritual death to life, from sin to grace, from darkness to light, from defeat and condemnation to victory and glory.

The Holy Week is when the contrast between good and evil, between divine mercy and human malice is at its sharpest. It's when the triumph of God's goodness over man's stupid rebellion is at its clearest. It's a very intense week.

In other words, the cosmic drama involving the interplay of the will and freedom of God, man, and the devil as the main protagonists, reaches its climax in the Holy Week. We cannot allow this event to pass by with us paying little attention to it. We have to rise to the occasion.

In a way the Holy Week marks the end of human slavery to sin and the beginning of man's recovery of his full dignity as a child of God. It ends man's alienation from his Creator and Father, and resumes his friendship with God.

But the Holy Week also highlights one very important truth. To participate in the resurrection of our Lord, we also need to participate in his passion and death. We need to die with Christ to also rise with him.

This is what is meant by the phrase, to be born again. We have to make the old man we have inside us to die, in order to give birth to the new man that we ought to be.

Thus, our Lord said very clearly that if we want to follow him, we have to carry the cross. The reason behind that commandment will be the subject of a future article. For now, let's just have faith in that indication Christ himself said.

Yes, dear, this is the formula taught to us very vividly in the Holy Week. There's no other formula to make our life worth living. We can choose to ignore it, run away from it, dispute it. We can follow another formula, but in the end, we really cannot escape from it.

This mysterious way that allows us to participate in a living way in the redemptive life, death and resurrection of Christ is what in Church language is called liturgy. It's a reality accessible only through faith and grace.

It's good to know what this liturgy is, so that at least we can develop the proper dispositions. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church defines it, "Christian liturgy not only recalls the events that saved us but actualizes them, makes them present.

"The Paschal mystery of Christ is celebrated, not repeated. It is the celebrations that are repeated, and in each celebration there is an outpouring of the Holy Spirit that makes the unique mystery present." (1104)

The reason that can immediately come to mind in our effort to understand this truth of faith is that Christ is both God and man. It pays to make our faith as theological as possible, that is, treated with reason, so we can be more aware of what we have in our faith.

The events that took place in Christ's life as man may be subject to time and space, but as God those events assume an eternal, ever-present character. They are always actual. They refuse to be swallowed by the flow of time.

Thus, in every liturgical celebration, we have to be aware that we are stepping into a deeper level of reality, the reality of faith, and we have to learn to react and behave accordingly.

Yes, it's awesome. But could we expect anything less from God?

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