“Heart on the Cross, Heart on the Cross”

Every year during Holy Week, when I was pastor of a parish with a school, inevitably one of the small children would ask me this sincere question: “Father, why do we call it Good Friday, when it was a day that such a terrible thing happened?”  It is a good question.  In fact, the Catechism states that the greatest evil which could ever be done in the history of the world was the condemnation, torture, crucifixion and death of the infinitely holy, infinitely good and infinitely loving Son of God.  

Holy Week is a very important time in the Catholic Church.  It begins today with Palm Sunday, (also called Passion Sunday) and it runs all week long leading to the Easter Vigil Mass, typically beginning after dark on Saturday evening.  The week is back loaded, so to speak, which means it gets heavier in importance as the week progresses.  The Sacred Triduum is Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday.  Easter Sunday, the Eighth Day of Creation, begins with the Holy Saturday Easter Vigil mass!  

Jesus has done many great things for us, and we will be thanking Him in Heaven for all eternity!  But the most important thing Jesus has done for us is to die… and to rise from the dead.   Jesus came to reconcile God’s people with God, to enable them to live in union with God and that means, to go to Heaven!   Good Friday was the day 2,000 years ago when The Event of Salvation was accomplished.  Watching the movie “The Passion of the Christ” is difficult even to sit through.  Crucifixion was absolutely barbaric and designed to cause the most horrible and extended pain until death.  Yet the “Good” done by this supreme act of self-immolation was and is the greatest “Good” the world has ever known.  

I like to define the word passion: “to love someone or something so much that we are willing to sacrifice, suffer and even die for that someone or something.”   Now you know why we call this Sunday Passion Sunday.  And we are all that “someone”, the beneficiaries of His love.  

St. Josemaria Escriva encourages all Christians during Holy Week: “Heart on the Cross!  Heart on the Cross!” He means that we should all try to be with Jesus this week, in our minds and hearts and prayers; thanking Him, telling Him that we love Him, and telling Him that we are so grateful for what He has done for us.  

My people, what have I done to you or in what have I offended you?  Answer me.   What more should I have done and did not do? I led you out of the land of Egypt and you prepared a cross for me.   I opened the Red Sea before you and you have opened my side with a lance.  With great power, I lifted you up.  And you have hung me upon a cross.  My people, what have I done to you, or in what have I offended you?  Answer me.  (the prophet Micah 6:3-ff)

A happy, well-engaged Holy Week will lead us to a Happy Easter!  

Fr. Brett Brannen

Pastor