Lenten Campaign 2025
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From Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, the Church offers to us an array of liturgical services that heighten our senses and plunges us into the beauty of the paschal mystery.
However, we don't always participate in the best way possible.
Certainly many of us attend all the services, including Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday.
The question remains, though, "Do we participate in body and spirit?"
Praying with the heart
On Monday of Holy Week, the priest will often pray the following prayer over the people found in the Roman Missal:
May your protection, O Lord, we pray,
defend the humble
and keep ever safe those who trust in your mercy,
that they may celebrate the paschal festivities
not only with bodily observance
but above all with purity of mind.
Through Christ our lord.
It can be easy to "go through the motions" of Holy Week and do everything that is "required" of us.
We can get our palms on Palm Sunday, our feet washed on Holy Thursday, and venerate the cross on Good Friday. We can do all of those external things without any internal participation of the heart.
This is what the Church is referring to, for example with the following quote from Sacrosanctum Concilium:
Mother Church earnestly desires that all the faithful should be led to that fully conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations which is demanded by the very nature of the liturgy. (SC, 14)
The USCCB confirms this view as well when it writes in its commentary on Sacrosanctum Concilium, "The heart and mind must be in harmony with what is proclaimed with the lips. Exterior and interior participation cannot be separated, both need to be nourished and developed by reflection and meditation upon the sacred texts which the Church has given us."
We can "fulfill" our sense of obligation by physically being present in the church building, but at the same time, we can be "inactive" in our participation.
What we need to do is approach each liturgy of Holy Week with a contrite and humble heart, open to the many graces God wants to pour out upon us.
It certainly isn't easy to focus our mind and attention on what is happening at the Holy Week liturgies, but we should strive as much as possible to approach every liturgy in a spirit of prayer.
Holy Week is indeed holy and is meant to be a preparation for that day when we will share in the resurrection Jesus won for us.
