Holy Week 2025. Just what is it?

Holy Week 2025

This week encapsulates all that we celebrate and believe as Catholics. Every significant aspect of our faith in God finds its roots in the week. This week, the scripture readings make clear that Jesus has fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament. He is truly our Messiah.

The readings for the week highlight the key events that allows us to be saved. Our sin, and the sins of our ancestors, all these sins have left us broken. Not only that, but creation itself was broken by these sins.

We begin the week with the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. It seems that all will be fine. People acclaim Jesus as the Messiah. And, to use the biblical description, the celebration rose to a fever pitch.

But this will not last. People are fickle. We change quickly, often based more on emotion than reason. We have read this past week about the escalating persecution of Jesus, and threats of death. But today it is almost as if none of this existed. God is praised!

But just a few short days later, the celebration is gone. Jesus is betrayed, arrested, and sentenced to death. Peter denies knowing Jesus, and the disciples (except for Saint John) all run away. In his greatest time of need, Jesus is abandoned.

And yet, there are faithful followers who remain. The apostle John remains, and the Blessed Mother remains. Other women also remain. They have the courage the other people do not. They stay by the side of Jesus and witness his gruesome death.

Each day of Holy Week helps us to celebrate a different aspect of the events of salvation. While much of the week depicts violent acts against Jesus, both in the betrayal, denial, arrest and abandonment, there are compassionate events too. Jesus meets the women. Simon of Cyrene helps carry the Cross.

And the gifts of faith are also recalled. We are reminded about the great self-gift of God in the Eucharist. Jesus gives himself totally, body and blood, soul and divinity to us in the great Eucharist. Further, we are reminded that to be faithful to Jesus in the Eucharist, the core obligation for us is service. We are to love God and our neighbor.

Also, we must consider that we, and all humans, bear the responsibility for the death of Jesus on the Cross. when sin entered the world through the first sin of Adam, our world was broken, and we could have justly been sent to condemnation.

But God had a plan b. Jesus becomes fully human, while remaining God. He will take on our sin and brokenness. The love he has for us is infinite and unconditional. On the Cross Jesus thinks of each one of us. Something that we are reminded of in the hymn Lord Jesus Think on Me.

There is almost too much to take in during this week. There is so much powerful symbolism. The pastor (or the bishop) demonstrates that at the heart of leadership is service. They wash the feet. This is a beautiful symbol but not always something enjoyable. This action demonstrates “Servant Leadership” long before that became a popular phrase.

As the instrument of the suffering and death of Jesus on the Cross is the genesis of the event of our salvation, we venerate it as a holy object. It is the case I think, for many, that the impact of the Cross is not always as clear to us as it should be.

For some, the impact concerns the sadness and loss experienced by Jesus. Some see in the Cross the pathway of suffering that makes them forever unworthy. But the Cross is also an event where Jesus heals our unworthiness. He saves us. And so we venerate the Cross.

The climax of Holy Week is the Easter Vigil. In this Mass, everything necessary for being Catholic is celebrated. We acknowledge that we live in a world of brokenness and darkness that can only be healed by Jesus. He is the Light of the World.

In the Easter Vigil, the Paschal Mystery comes to its natural conclusion. It pours forth for us our salvation. In celebrating and living through the Easter Triduum, the great “three days” of Easter, we are all made whole again. The gates of heaven are opened to us by the only person who could do so.

The symbolism is rich. Light. Water. Oil. Speaking of faith. These are just a few of the symbols, but they all point to Jesus. They all point to the Paschal Mystery, which wins for us salvation, something we could never win for ourselves.

Holy Week also reminds us that we see the world differently because of our faith. Too often, I think, politics becomes our religion. And too often politics focuses on the self. The Catholic faith focuses on the view of faith that suggests we must love our God fully, and our neighbor as ourself. But this is not always easy. we can be tempted to think people need to earn the right to be helped. That we need to be wary we are not taken.

But the Easter celebration is not limiting in this way. As in the parable of the Good Samaritan, we belong to each others. As Jesus reminds us in Matthew 25, we will be held responsible for helping or ignoring anyone in need.

What is most important to us during this week is that it cannot be explained exhaustively. It is meant to be experienced. The symbols are meant to be seen and experienced. Holy Week means that we should enter into the celebration. We are not going to fully understand it. But Holy Week reminds us that our faith is not a mystery to be solved, but one to be lived.

So enter into it. Be sure to embrace your faith. Seek to embrace the life, suffering and death of Jesus. Realize that these events of the Paschal Mystery are for us. They allow us to be the persons Jesus made us to be. They are events that remind us that our brokenness and sin need not be permanent.

For at the end of this week we will joyously proclaim: Jesus is Risen! He is indeed risen!

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update. And we have restarted our podcasts after a hiatus. You can subscribe to our podcasts on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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