Holy Week is the Holiest Week of the Year as it is Cosmic, Historic & Salvific!
The Cosmos understood as man and his relations with everything in time and space, including history, has been brought into the heart of the Drama of salvation that is the Eucharist. So the work of God to bring about in human beings both a Personalization and a socialization that reflects the Holy Trinity and it is a work that redeems and graces human beings for perfection in and through the Eucharistic mystery. The Eucharist at the Sunday Mass can be compared to a scroll rolled up upon which is written and pictured the drama of salvation. But in Holy Week the Sunday Mass is unrolled like a scroll so that we can see the whole work of redemption played out and we call it the Paschal Mystery.
The Paschal Mystery is the life, death and resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ into whose mystery Baptism initiates us. Because of the Incarnation, the drama of salvation is the key to every story of every human being for the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us, the Word through which all things were made. Indeed, in every home, every work-place, every village, town, city or country, and yes, in every parish, the drama of Holy Week is played out. The question is what has been our part in this drama and what will be our part in the drama for every year to come?
In the drama of Holy Week:
there are some who are traitors - those of us who have played the part of Judas;
there are some who are disloyal – those of us who have denied fellowship with Jesus like Peter;
there are some who physically or mentally torture and kill – those of us who have acted like the Roman soldiers;
there are some who bring false charges – those of us who have been calumniators, gossips and snitches;
there are some who wash their hands of Justice - those of us who have sat on the fence like Pilate;
there are those who care more for their pleasures then justice - those who have joined Herod and his Herodians;
there are those who care for their religious and social status - those who defend it fiercely against all who critique it as did the High Priests and Pharisees;
and there are those who follow the crowd which slavishly and fearfully follow the narrative of the powerful and influential - those who cried out those dreadful words “Crucify him!”
But there are those among us who have not washed their hands of injustice like Pilate.
there are those among us who have actually remained loyal;
there are those among us who will remain loyal in the future;
there are those among us who have sought peace and justice;
there are those among us who have also been merciful and fair;
and those of us who have sought that true integrity found in living according to the Spirit and not the flesh.
They are the ones who have not been afraid to walk with Christ to the cross for they have tread the way of humility and service. They have died to self, picked up their cross daily and followed our Lord and consequently their future is one of dying to selfishness, jealousy and pride and striving to live in Faith, Hope, but in and through that Supernatural Love we call Charity that fulfills the Law to love God and to love our neighbour, even if he or she be our enemy!
In other words, the Holy Week reveals the drama of salvation played on in the life-story of every human being. Some have accepted the redeeming of their time and others have not, some are born of the spirit and others are not, some are born of the Spirit and others remain born of the flesh, some live and worship according to the Spirit and truth whilst others live by passions, appetities, tooth and claw. In the words of St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:39-46:
Not all flesh is the same flesh: there is human flesh; animals have another kind of flesh, birds another and fish yet another. Then there are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies; the heavenly have a splendour of their own, and the earthly a different splendour.
The sun has its own splendour, the moon another splendour, and the stars yet anothersplendour; and the stars differ among themselves in splendour. It is the same too with the resurrection of the dead: what is sown is perishable, but what is raised is imperishable; what is sown is contemptible but what is raised is glorious; what is sown is weak, but what is raised is powerful; what is sown is a natural body, and what is raised is a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is a spiritual body too.
So the first man, Adam, as scripture says, became a living soul; and the last Adam has become a life-giving spirit. But first came the natural body, not the spiritual one; that came only afterwards.
At the heart of redeemed creation is the life and mission of the Body of Christ, the Church. A mystery that we find fully articulated in the hymn that Paul wrote to the Colossians which would have been used in celebrating the Eucharist in the Church during Apostolic times Col 1:15-20:
He is the image of the unseen God, the first-born of all creation, for in him were created all things in heaven and on earth: everything visible and everything invisible, thrones, ruling forces, sovereignties, powers - all things were created through him and for him.
He exists before all things and in him all things hold together, and he is the Head of the Body, that is, the Church.
He is the Beginning, the first-born from the dead, so that he should be supreme in every way; because God wanted all fullness to be found in him and through him to reconcile all things to him, everything in heaven and everything on earth, by making peace through his death on the cross.
Here the redemption of the Cosmos is clear for all to see. By Baptism the People of God participate in a royal priesthood whose mission is to bring everything and everyone under the rule and reign of Christ. But through the Sacrament of Holy Orders this sacrifice that takes away the sins of the world is made present to every generation in every time and place. The Sacrifice of Christ that is re-presented in the Eucharist has, therefore, a universal purpose for it embraces:
a. everything visible and invisible - the sacramental principle where matter and spirit are brought together in the Incarnation and draws in to this mystery everything from the spiritual beings down to material beings as the Nativity scene of Christ reveals and Maundy Thursday celebrates;
b. the living and the dead - the mystery celebrated by Good Friday which embraces death, the mystery of Holy Saturday which embraces the souls of the dead (past, present and future), the mystery celebrated by Easter Sunday which embraces all called to eternal life with God;
c. everything on earth and everything in heaven - the Cosmic dimension that brings all powers, principalities, thrones and dominions in heaven and on earth under the rule of Christ and that is the mystery we celebrate on the Day of the Ascension as it is the Omega point of the Cosmos.
Indeed, we can say that from Holy Week through Easter-tide, Ascension and Pentecost we have the unveiling of the full efficacious mystery of the Eucharist. An efficacious work of Our Redeemer that has no limits for it is in and through the Cross that everything and everyone is brought into the peace of God, the Kingdom of God. Only human freedom can limit this work by saying ‘No!’ Here is the height and depth, the width and breadth of the Eucharist and it is why it is the source and summit of the life of the Church and as such it is fundamentally made to be for all peoples, for all time and for all places and this is what is meant by being the Catholic (Kata-holis), Universal Church. It is a:
‘message which was a mystery hidden for generations and centuries and has now been revealed to his holy people. It was God's purpose to reveal to them how rich is the glory of this mystery among the gentiles; it is Christ among you, your hope of glory: this is the Christ we are proclaiming, admonishing and instructing everyone in all wisdom, to make everyone perfect in Christ’ (Col. 1.26-28).
The great Russian Philosopher Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev [1874-1948] presents to us the full meaning of the Church’s relation to the Cosmos when he writes:
‘Those who only see in the Church an institution deny its cosmic significance. It is in the Church that the grass grows and the flowers blossom, for the Church is nothing less than the cosmos Christianized’ (Caldecott, p. 312, ‘Cosmology, eschatology, ecology.’ in Cosmology and Creation (Communio, Vol. XV, No. 3, 1988)).
