Welcome to Holy Week. It’s amazing that we’re already here, that the journey of Lent, which started six weeks ago, has already brought us into this most sacred week of the year. As I welcome you to Holy Week, I have a few encouragements for us as we find ourselves here on the journey.
The first is to really just return to where we were last time that we were together when I encouraged you to go to the sacrament of reconciliation. If I, as a father, can just check in with you about that. For some of us, you actually were able to celebrate the sacrament of reconciliation. I pray that it was a life-giving experience and that you have tasted the freedom that was offered to you in that sacrament. So if you were able to celebrate the sacrament of reconciliation, praise God. He’s proud of you and I pray that that experience was filled with grace.
For some of us, maybe you were not able to actually make it to confession or find confession, or maybe you’re planning on celebrating the sacraments as it gets closer into Holy Thursday and then Friday. And if that’s where you are, then our prayers for you is that experience is filled with a lot of freedom. But perhaps for some of us, as you hear the invitation to go to confession, maybe some of the either reservations or maybe the questions that we talked about last week remained. And I love you too much not to encourage you one more time. God is the one who’s calling you. God is the one who’s waiting for you, and I just can’t encourage you enough. If you did not yet get a chance to celebrate the sacrament of reconciliation, to consider the freedom that is waiting for you in that beautiful gift.
The second invitation for us this week is to invite you to actually participate in your parish celebration of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and one of the Easter services. Now if you’ve never been to the Holy Thursday celebration, the mass of the Lord’s Supper, it’s a beautiful encounter of the washing of the feet. That’s where Jesus gives us the Eucharist. It’s a special night. It’s really a beautiful experience. Of course, Good Friday is where we celebrate his passion, the gift of himself to us on the cross. And, of course, Jesus’ Sunday is a day filled with joy. And for many of us, as you perhaps in the past have attended those services, my invitation to you this week, my encouragement is to look at them through the lens of your relationship with Jesus. It’s all about the person of Jesus Christ that we’re celebrating. And if you have not in the past attended those services, and you were looking for a sign from God about whether you should go, well, here’s a sign right here. I’m encouraging you, as one who loves you, to to call your parish to find out what the schedule is for Holy Thursday, Good Friday and then pick one of those Easter Masses to go to. It’s going to be a really beautiful experience because it’s all about the person of Jesus Christ and the more that we can encounter him in those liturgies, the more that it will make his gift to us even more personal.
In order to help us with that I want to invite you to pray with me today. I want to invite you to join me in some imaginative prayer a guided meditation as together we go to the cross. And if I can, just as I did last week, invite you to pray with me, I want to invite you today to join me as we together go to Golgotha. As we go to the Cross itself. As we join Jesus and his mother on Good Friday. So, with that being said, I want to invite you to pray with me now as we ask God to guide us. And so I invite you to close your eyes just for a second and just relax, rest, take a few deep breaths and ask God to give you a presence to the present moment.
Holy Spirit, we ask if you would enliven our spiritual senses. Help us to see what was there and to hear all that was. The Cross. I invite you, in your imagination, to be at the Cross. Just imagine the base of the cross, just the wood itself. What does it look like? What does the texture of the cross look like? If you could almost put your hand there to feel the splinters that are there, they are just the strength of the Cross. What does the Cross look like in your heart?
Look at the bottom of the cross; look at the base. And as you lift up the eye of your heart a little higher, you can see Jesus’s feet there. Nailed to the Cross. And to the nail pressed through his feet. You can see his toes and the tendons that are there and the blood coming from the nail that covers his feet.
If you just lift your eye just a little higher, you can see his legs exhausted with his knees as he has fallen several times. You can see the bruises, the cuts on his knees, suffering from the weight of carrying the Cross. And your eyes lift all the way up to his chest; you can still see lacerations from the scourging on his chest.
Look at his left arm extended out and that nail through his hand. You can see his hands, his fingers. You can see the nail, an iron nail, through his flesh. And as your eyes move from left to right, you can now soon see his right arm. In his right hand, again with a nail there. That iron kind of a piercing his flesh. His fingers curled in pain.
Let your eyes move from right to left. They rest now on his face. His head. You can see the crown-of-thorns. You can see them so vividly. It’s almost like you can touch and feel the prick of each of the thorns itself. You can see the trickles of blood which come down from the crown into his face.
You see his mouth, his nose, and his eyes. What would his eyes look like today? What color are his eyes? As they look at you, you realize that you are standing at the Cross, looking into the eyes of Jesus. Looking into the eyes of Jesus. And you become aware as you’re standing there that someone else is now standing on the side of you. Mary. You slowly turn, and you can see her face. She’s been at least in her olive complexion, her rich black hair covered with that veil. Her eyes are locked on her son. She’s looking at him with the strength of a mother beholding her son.
She lifts her hand, places it on your shoulder, and squeezes it. You can feel her fingers squeezing your shoulder. Now, you can feel her heart in that embrace. You you instinctively just turn your gaze back to Jesus on the Cross with his eyes looking at you. What’s in your heart as you look at Jesus on the cross? What’s the emotion? What’s the feeling? What’s the thought? What do you want to say to him? What do you want him to say to you?
With your eyes on him, with Mary’s hand on your shoulder, stay there for as long as you want. Be there at the Cross.
God bless you.
Saint Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church 