The Suffering of Passiontide & Holy Week

Prepares Us for the Joyful Remedy that is Easter!​​

 

 As the month of April begins, so too does the final stretch of our Lenten season! Last weekend (March 29-30) we celebrated "Laetare Sunday" with shades of rose vestments as we reflected joyfully upon God's mercy and how we are privileged to receive it, as illustrated by the moving parable of the "Prodigal Son". Now, we begin the final days leading to Passiontide and the great salvific drama of HOLY WEEK. For generations, it has been a Catholic tradition in the west to veil statues and holy images in the Church beginning with the 5th Weekend in Lent and through Holy Saturday during the Sacred Triduum. These last two weeks form a sacred time called 'PASSIONTIDE'. Liturgically, veiling was a reference to the gospel that was traditionally read on this Sunday, in which Jesus 'hid Himself' from the Jews who were preparing to stone Him. Theologically, it was also understood as a 'veiling of His glory', as St. Augustine tells us, when Christ became invisible by virtue of His divine nature, ceasing also any miracles until the time of His Resurrection from the dead. And so the veiling of crucifixes and holy images of the saints represent a temporary 'veiling of divine glory' in our midst. Spiritually, this practice is also a way of intensifying our experience of fasting with a 'fasting of our eyes' as we draw nearer to the Cross, in which we deny ourselves the crafted beauty beheld by our eyes so that we might focus more intently with our hearts upon the Savior who ransoms us from death.

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 Drawing near to the intense suffering of Christ on Cross should also draw us near to those who are experiencing intense suffering among us here and now. When we think of the suffering Christ, we likely think first of the physical pain that was inflicted upon Him by His persecutors. Likewise, when we think of suffering people, we first imagine the sensible pains of material poverty, homelessness, starvation, physical illness, infirmity, or injury. These are visible and more immediately relatable. Human suffering, however, while it can include physical pain, has deeper emotional, mental, and spiritual components that are unique to the human experience: loneliness, isolation, mental illness, crippling habits of immorality, persecution, spiritual despair. No doubt we could think of other examples.

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 All of human suffering - in body, mind, and soul - finds its fullest expression in the suffering Christ. Yet while the Christian looks upon the Crucified One with grief, the Christian never looks upon the suffering Christ without HOPE, for the Christian knows that it is in the suffering Christ that we also find the perfect antidote and remedy for everything that ails us in body, mind, and soul! It is the remedy of the suffering Christ - the remedy of His Cross - that leads the suffering soul to healing, and the dying soul to the Resurrection of new life!

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 The statues will be veiled on Friday, April 4th, anticipating the period of Passiontide, which begins that weekend of April 5th & 6th. Later that week marks the "FRIDAY OF SORROWS" on Friday April 11th,  on which we remember the sorrowful suffering of the Blessed Mother as she witnessed her son's torture and crucifixion. We unite our hearts to her in grief during this time so that, through her intercession, we may, with her, unite our hearts and our sufferings to Christ upon the Cross.

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 Who can gaze upon the Innocent Victim of our sins and not be moved to sorrow and conversion of heart?! Yet we know that many hearts remain unmoved. As Christians, we should certainly be as moved to grieve over our sins as we are moved to rejoice in their remedy. Our joyful hope should move us to show patient and loving compassion for all who are suffering in this world as a sign of Christ's loving sacrifice, for it was Christ Who showed loving compassion for us first: "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." (Luke 23:34). Let us pray together for the movement of hearts all over the world to true faith and repentance in Christ Jesus, Who suffered and died for us that we might live!

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Oremvs Pro Invicem!

Father Albert Beltz, KHS, Pastor

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