BASIC ASPECTS ABOUT HOLY WEEK
BASIC ASPECTS ABOUT HOLY WEEK
The liturgical colors in Holy Week
These days ornaments are used whose color has a meaning that is indicated below:
Red recalls the royalty of Christ and also his blood shed in the Passion, which is why it is used on Passion Sunday from the procession of palms in honor of Christ the King and also on Good Friday.
Purple is a sign of penance and that is why it is used in Lent and in its final days, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of Holy Week.
White is the color of joy and is worn throughout Easter, the Fifty or Pentecost, from the Easter Vigil; The garments of the angels announcing the resurrection of Jesus are white and resplendent, as were his garments in the Transfiguration.
Holy Week processions
From those of passion and death to that of glory, these popular pious manifestations are a source of wonder, questions and emotions for the youngest, and the older ones should take advantage of it so that the truths of faith in Jesus Christ are preserved together with the plastic images of the steps and also of the representations of the Passion. The penitents, the promises, the sacrifices… must lead to an explanation that all of life must also be an exercise of renunciation of sin and bad habits, to purify ourselves, take advantage of the love that God offers us and convert each time more to God.
PALM SUNDAY IN THE PASSION
Blessing of palms and branches, procession and Holy Mass.
We accompany the Lord when he enters Jerusalem to offer his sacrifice for the redemption of the world.
In the fourth century, a large number of pilgrims began to arrive in the Holy Land who wanted to remember the events of Jesus in the same places where they had occurred. Very soon they began to repeat the festive entry of the Lord into Jerusalem, coming down from the Mount of Olives with palms, branches and songs and accompanying the Bishop.
This celebration spread throughout the churches in different forms, and the Roman liturgy itself is very faithful to the primitive tradition of Jerusalem, with the assembly meeting outside the church, and marching towards it after reading the Gospel of the entrance of Jesus, following with songs the presiding Bishop or priest.
A rite of this day: The procession of the palms and branches. It is a procession, where the priest is in the lead and a group goes after him. There are no images, because the march is like the body of Christ, head and body that go to Zion and to the temple, in the City of God. We do what the children and people of Jerusalem did on this very day.
PASCHAL TRIDUUM
The Holy Easter Triduum of Jesus Christ, dead, buried and resurrected covers from the Mass at the Lord’s Supper to the second Vespers of Easter. During the first centuries, all these moments of the Paschal Mystery were celebrated in a single sacred action that was the Paschal Vigil, on the night from Saturday to Sunday.
However, at least since the fourth century, pilgrims to Jerusalem celebrated what had happened every day of these and in the same places. The example of Jerusalem was imitated in the other Churches, giving a historical meaning to these days and following in the footsteps of the Lord. In any case, the unity of the Paschal Mystery cannot be broken and is present in each of these celebrations.
HOLY THURSDAY. MASS AT THE LORD’S SUPPER
The institution of the Eucharist and the priesthood are commemorated, and the supreme commandment of love is remembered. It is the ‘Day of brotherly love’.
Some rites of this day: The washing of the feet.
All the churches are this day a great cenacle. The people chosen for the lavatory represent the twelve apostles and the priest is Jesus Christ, thus setting an example of humility and service. The context in which Jesus pronounces these words is none other than the night of Holy Thursday, after the Supper, before dying on the cross. On this impressive occasion, Jesus reveals to his disciples that he is going to the Father. This going to the Father constitutes the most important moment of salvation. Everyone who follows Jesus will go where He goes.
The following day (Good Friday), the Eucharist is not celebrated, and the transfer of the consecrated forms to the tabernacle is highlighted with a procession. This opens a time of vigil and prayer before the Blessed Sacrament in which we respond to the words of Jesus on the Mount of Olives: Watch and pray so as not to fall into temptation (Mt 26:41).
Monument’
In the offices of Holy Thursday, the Blessed Sacrament is reserved in a place that is prepared in the church, called “Monument”, until the office of the following day, allowing the faithful personal or community Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament for hours or the entire night, according to the possibilities of each place. In this way we accompany the Lord in the solitude of his Passion and we thank him because he wanted to remain sacramentally in our midst.
In the Middle Ages, the place where a single consecrated form was kept for the communion of the priest in the celebration of Good Friday began to be called ‘monumentum’, a Latin word that means ‘tomb’. Now we should be forgetting this funereal sense to value the immense grace of the Eucharistic presence, permanent memorial of the sacrificial delivery of Christ, and also initiating children and young people in this pious practice.
Today the tabernacle is adorned with flowers and lights, to teach us the importance of the Lord’s presence in the tabernacle every day, where he is kept to give communion to the sick or those in danger of death and to be worshiped calmly and silence, in a dialogue with him.
HOLY FRIDAY. CELEBRATION OF THE PASSION OF THE LORD
This evening act begins with the liturgy of the word in which two readings and the Passion according to Saint John are read, which is followed by the homily and the universal prayer; This liturgy concludes with adoration of the Cross and communion with the Eucharist consecrated in the Mass of the Lord’s Supper.
Some rites of this day: The adoration of the cross.
An altar without tablecloths and the wood of the cross without the image of Christ. On this afternoon, the nudity of the altar, symbol of that of Jesus on Calvary, and the austerity of the ceremony take us to Golgotha.
It is an act of deep seriousness, but illuminated by the glory of the wood on which the salvation of the world was nailed. The Good Friday act is not a funeral. The simple wooden cross, without the image of the crucified, which crosses the church to the altar to be worshiped there: the trophy of the Passion before which we must genuflect whenever we pass before it, until the Easter Vigil begins.
HOLY SATURDAY Office of readings and Lauds.
During this day, the Church remains next to the sepulcher of the Lord meditating on his passion and death, and that descent to the place of the dead, in which his soul was united with the remaining souls of the just of the Old Testament and redeemed them from their captivity. . With this descent to the depths of death, the Lord initiates his victory over it.
On Holy Night, solemn Easter Vigil
The Paschal Mystery of Christ crucified, buried and risen, has its culminating celebration in this nocturnal liturgy. The vigil begins outside the temple with the liturgy of light and the church is illuminated as a sign of the Lord’s resurrection. The liturgy of the word proclaims the wonders of God in the history of salvation, from the creation of the world to the Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ; then comes the baptismal liturgy, with the renewal of promises made at Christian initiation (baptism), and then the assembly is invited to the table that the Lord, through his death and resurrection, has prepared for his people (fourth part of the vigil, Eucharistic liturgy).
Some rites of this day: The Vigil
This is a night of vigil in honor of the Lord, as the chosen people did from the beginning of the Exodus in Egypt. The Lord ‘passed over’ that night to deliver the Israelites. Easter means ‘passage’. It is the same night that ended with the dawn of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We Christians go from night to day, the Lord makes us pass from death to life that does not end.
Some singular signs: The fire and the Paschal candle.
We gather around a campfire, like the Israelites in the camps on their way to the promised land. At Easter everything is new, the fire, the water of Baptism, the unleavened bread…
The Paschal candle is a symbol of the risen Jesus Christ, which preserves the traces of the passion, such as the cross and the five marks indicated with grains of incense that recall the five wounds of the crucified. Also marked on the candle are the Greek letters Alpha and Omega, which mean that Jesus is Lord of this Easter and of all time, from beginning to end. Like the pillar of fire that was guiding the Israelites in the desert, so now Jesus guides us and enters the church first, illuminating it with his light.
EASTER SUNDAY OF THE RESURRECTION OF THE LORD Solemn Mass.
The fifty days that go from this Sunday of Resurrection to that of Pentecost must be celebrated with joy and exultation as if it were a single and unique holiday, even more, as a ‘great Sunday’, as proclaimed in the hymn Israelite typical of these dates that Christians apply to the Paschal Mystery: “This is the day the Lord acted; be our joy and joy” (Psalm 117, 24).
A ritual of this day: The ‘encounter’.
In almost all the towns the ceremony of the ‘Encounter’ of Jesus with his holy Mother takes place. It is a youthful and joyful act, in which liberation from death is expressed by releasing little birds and doves; As Psalm 123 says: Our life has escaped like a bird from the hunter’s cage…
How is the date of Holy Week determined?
Good Friday is the Friday immediately after the first full Moon after the spring equinox, and must be calculated using the lunar calendar. Therefore, Good Friday can be as early as March 21, or as late as April 23.
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