By Father Rich Tomkosky
This is Holy Week. It is holy because it is the week we recall, each year, in a poignant way, the events that led to the salvation of the human race: the Passion, Death and Resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
He alone is the Savior of the human race. “There is no salvation in anyone else, for there is no other name in the whole world given to men by which we are to be saved” (see Acts 4:12). Never forget that truth! And do your best to invite those who have fallen away from the Faith, or who have no faith, to come to Church.
We all called this week to renew our Faith in Jesus and to invite Him to re-live His Passion, death and Resurrection in us. Let us pray for the grace to enter mystically (in a real spiritual tangible sense: quisi-experimentially as Father Garrigou La-Grange calls it in his two-volume master work The 3 Ages of the Interior Life, see Vol. 1, chap 4) into the Passion of Christ this week – to the extent we are able, as God alone knows. Please come to as many of the Holy Week Liturgical events as possible. It is meant to be a week of deep spiritual reflection and great grace: somber and melancholic on some deep level as we think of Holy Thursday and Good Friday and Jesus’s time in the grave, but culminating in the great joy of the Resurrection, at the Vigil and Easter Sunday.
Finally, during this Holy Week, let us ask our Heavenly Father in love to help us to unite ourselves with Jesus not just in our memories and intellects, but also in our hearts and wills, so that the Holy Spirit can then mold us increasingly into a living image of Jesus, in our entire being, over the long term – and not just this week, once a year. This is what the mystical understanding of the Passion which many of the saints mention in their writings is all about (see Garrigou, Vol. 2, chap 49 on the Life of Reparation).
May this truly be a Holy Week, for every one of us in our faith, by entering intimately into the saving events of this week with Jesus, in Jesus, and through Jesus to the glory of the Blessed Trinity and for the salvation of our souls and for the souls of other people. God bless you.
Father Rich Tomkosky is the Pastor of Saint Thomas the Apostle Parish in Bedford and the Pastor of Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish in Beans Cove.
