Holy Week is the most important week in the Christian calendar. We have gathered a number of resources – reflections and homily notes – to help you prepare for Easter and the Triduum ceremonies.
REFLECTIONS MONDAY-WEDNESDAY
As Easter approaches, each day this week is a chance to consider the various stories leading up to the death and resurrection of Jesus.
On Monday, we contemplate the anointing of Jesus’ feet by Mary, sister of Martha and Lazarus, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Both Tuesday (John 13: 21-38) and Wednesday (Matthew 26:14-25) gospels are from the Last Supper when Jesus tells the disciples he will be betrayed by one of them.
REFLECTIONS FOR THE TRIDUUM
When Jesus washes the feet of his disciples in the Gospel on Holy Thursday he is ‘giving you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you’.
The first reading of Good Friday is the haunting words of Isaiah ‘he was despised and we took no account of him. And yet ours were the sufferings he bore, ours the sorrows he carried’ that provide fodder for contemplation. On Saturday our thoughts turn to the brave women who dare to visit the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus but find an empty tomb and then return to the eleven to tell of what they saw.
TRIDUUM HOMILY NOTES
In his homily notes for the Triduum, Brendan Byrne SJ says the choice of readings for Holy Thursday’s liturgy of the Lord’s Supper is guided by the fact that Jesus instituted the Eucharist in the context of celebrating with his disciples a final Passover meal.
The Scripture readings for Good Friday meanwhile are texts that stood at the centre of early Christian attempts to find and express the deeper, indeed saving and victorious meaning they believed lay beneath the outward horror of the crucifixion.
For the Easter Vigil, Fr Byrne says that just as a family will gather round on important occasions and tell and retell the family stories, so there is a sense in which the Church keeps its ‘best stories’ for this most significant celebration. ‘These are the family stories that shape our identity as Christians: they tell us where we have come from, who we are and where we are going according to the saving plan of God’.
EASTER DAY REFLECTIONS AND HOMILY NOTES
On the oldest of the Church’s feast days we reflect on the wonder-filled celebration of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
For Easter Sunday, Fr Byrne posits that the ‘disciple whom Jesus loved’, the one who enters the empty tomb of Jesus and believes, is the representative for all of us – believers of subsequent generations.
Andrew Hamilton SJ says while there is a discordance between the spring images of Easter and the experience of autumn in Australia, this actually sharpens the meaning of Easter for us. Easter represents our hope that even after the winter to which the year is heading greenness will return. The memory of Easter is food for a testing journey. It is about both memory and hope.
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