Sunday Meditation: Holy Week and the Institution of the Eucharist

I’ve had several posts on Palm Sunday over the years.  The latest from Year A was three years ago where you could hear Dr. Brant Pitre explain Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem and about the two donkeys of Matthew’s version.  Or you can hear Fr. Geoffrey Plant explain Palm Sunday on a Year C Gospel reading.  Or you can just search all my “Palm Sunday” blog posts to pull them all up. 

Today I want to focus on Holy Week and the Institution of the Eucharist.  The Passion reading stretches across the week and includes Matthew’s version of the Institution narrative.  But I want also post a summary of the Holy Week Gospel events.  This is a simplified listing of the salient events.  It is not comprehensive.

 

Jesus Raises Lazerus	Week Prior to Palm Sunday
Jesus Retreats to Ephriam	Week Prior to Palm Sunday
Jesus Travels Back to Bethany	Week Prior to Palm Sunday
Mary Anoints Jesus	Saturday Before Palm Sunday
Jesus Enters Jerusalem	Palm Sunday
Jesus Cleans the Temple	Holy Monday
Jesus Sermon on the End of Times	Holy Tuesday
Judas Agrees to Betray Jesus	Holy Wednesday/Spy Wednesday
The Last Supper	Holy Thursday
Jesus’s Anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane	Holy Thursday Evening
Jesus is Apprehended	Holy Thursday Evening
Jesus’s Trial Before the Sanhedrin	Holy Thursday Evening
Jesus’s Trial Before Pilate	Early Good Friday Morning
Jesus is Scourged, Crucified, Dies, and Buried	Good Friday
Jesus’s Harrowing of Hell	Holy Saturday
Jesus’s Resurrection	Easter Sunday

 

 

 

Here is the Institution Narrative from Matthew’s Passion.

 

 

While they were eating,

Jesus took bread, said the blessing,

broke it, and giving it to his disciples said,

"Take and eat; this is my body."

Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying,

"Drink from it, all of you,

for this is my blood of the covenant,

which will be shed on behalf of many

for the forgiveness of sins.

I tell you, from now on I shall not drink this fruit of the vine

until the day when I drink it with you new

in the kingdom of my Father."

Then, after singing a hymn,

they went out to the Mount of Olives.

~Mt:26:26-29

 

I will start with a pastoral homily first this Sunday.  Fr. Thomas McCarthy of the Order of St. Augustine—the same Order from which Pope Leo XIV heralds—explains Palm Sunday and the Institution of the Eucharist.

 

Fr. Thomas McCarthy:

It was at that meal that he instituted the priesthood and the Eucharist by taking bread and saying, "This is my body. Do this in memory of me." By taking the chalice filled with wine and saying, "This is my blood. Do this in memory of me. As Catholics, we say those words every time we go to mass. We are doing exactly what Jesus said. He did not say this is a symbol.  He did not say this is kind of almost/sort of/like/maybe. He said this is my body. This is my blood. Do it in memory of me. And so that's why as Catholics we believe in the real presence that the Eucharist is not a symbol. It is not a reenactment. is not a kind of sort of like almost maybe. And so it all happened at the last supper. And it was also at that last supper that Jesus humbled himself, took the form of a slave and washed his disciples feet.

So what are we to do this week?  Fr. Thomas says, “This holy week begins today and I hope that all of us will take time to truly celebrate and prayerfully be attentive to what's happening this week.  So my friends, how good it is that we are here. And I just want to encourage us all to really live out this this week.

To explain Holy Week, I found this new YouTube channel called Catholic Snack that explains Catholic theology and Catholic news of the day.  Here is the video on the Holy Week events.

 

Catholic Snack:

This is Holy Week. And if you've never understood what really happened during those eight days, stay with me because this story will change the way you see everything.  Every year, Christians around the world enter into a sacred season called Holy Week, the final week of Lent leading up to Easter Sunday. But for many people, sit can feel like a blur of church services, prayers, and traditions without fully grasping the weight of what actually happened. Holy Week is not just a religious calendar event. It is the story of God stepping fully into human suffering, betrayal, abandonment, agony, death, and then doing something no one expected. It is the greatest story ever told. And it happened in real time over eight unforgettable days. So, let's walk through it together, day by day, step by step.

That is pretty good for a “snack.”  I wonder why they named themselves that.  I have not found any background on this channel.  I found this part on Holy Saturday profound.

Catholic Snack:

We live so much of our lives on Holy Saturday, in the in between, after the loss, before the answer, in the silence where God seems absent, but is in fact working. The church's tradition tells us that on this day Christ descended to the dead, reaching even into the depths to bring light where there had only ever been darkness.  In the silence of Holy Saturday, God was not absent. He was at work in the places we couldn't see.  This is the day of waiting, of darkness before dawn, of faith without sight. And sit is one of the most important lessons of Holy Week. Because most of us know this place. Most of us have sat in this silence. And Holy Saturday tells us, "Hold on. Morning is coming, Sunday.

I loved this as a conclusion.

Catholic Snack:

Holy Week is not a story that happened 2,000 years ago and stayed there. It is a story that is still happening in every person who carries a cross they didn't choose.  In every moment of betrayal, grief, and silence, in every mourning that arrives when you thought the darkness would never end, Jesus walked through all of it. He didn't observe it from a safe distance. He entered it fully, flesh, blood, tears, nails, and all so that no human experience would ever be outside the reach of his presence. When you are in your Palm, Sunday, joyful, full of hope, he is there. When you are in your Gethsemane, afraid on your knees, asking God to take the cup away, he is there.  When you are in your Holy Saturday, silent, waiting, uncertain, he is there. And he is always, always moving toward Easter. This Holy Week, I invite you not just to observe the liturgy, but to enter the story, to let it find you where you are, to allow the passion of Christ to speak to your own.  Because that is what Holy Week is for.  Not to make us spectators, but to make us witnesses.

 

 

Sunday Meditation: “I tell you, from now on I shall not drink this fruit of the vine until the day when I drink it with you new in the kingdom of my Father."

 

This is supposed to be a traditional hymn for Palm Sunday, “All Glory, Laud, and Honor.”

 

All glory, laud, and honour

to you, Redeemer, King!

To whom the lips of children

made sweet hosannas ring.

 

You are the King of Israel

and David's royal Son,

now in the Lord's name coming,

the King and Blessed One.

 

ll glory, laud, and honour

to you, Redeemer, King!

To whom the lips of children

made sweet hosannas ring.

 

The company of angels

are praising you on high;

and mortals joined with all things

created make reply.

 

All glory, laud, and honour

to you, Redeemer, King!

To whom the lips of children

made sweet hosannas ring.

 

Literature in the News: Dantedì

Dantedì refers to the holiday celebrating the great Italian poet, Dante Alighieri.  

From the website, ItalianTraditions. 

March 25th is celebrated throughout Italy on Dantedì, the national day dedicated to Dante Alighieri, father of the Italian language and author of the Divine Comedy. This date is not random: scholars recognize it as the day the otherworldly journey begins narrated in his masterpiece, a universal symbol of search, redemption and knowledge.

Established in 2020, Dantedì represents a precious opportunity to rediscover the current events of Dante and the value of his work. It is not just a tribute to literature, but a moment to reflect on Italian cultural identity and the power of the word as tool for thinking and transformation.

Well, that is incomplete.  In a day to reflect on the value of Dante’s Divine Comedy and on the Italy’s deep and grand culture, but also on today’s date, the traditional date assigned to the Blessed Virgin Mary assent to being the Mother of God.  So today is a confluence of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the day Dante the character spent in Hell.  Of course it’s not a coincidence.  It is widely known that Dante the author starts the pilgrimage of Dante the character on Good Friday of the year 1300.  What is not as widely well known, though growing in circulation, is that Good Friday of the year 1300 happened to be March 25^th, which would make it on the same day as the Feast of the Annunciation.  So the greatest Catholic poem ever written, also the greatest Italian poem ever written—heck, the greatest poem, period, ever written—sets the start of the action on both Good Friday and the Feast of the Annunciation.

On this Feast Day primarily of the Annunciation and secondarily of Dantedì, I wish to commemorate with first let’s start with a clip from the great Zeffirelli movie, Jesus of Nazareth, the Annunciation scene.

 

Second, I want to quote from the beginning of Dante’s Inferno, the first canto where Dante the character is lost in a wood.  From the wonderful Hollander and Hollander translation which can be found at the Princeton Dante Project.

 

              1            Midway in the journey of our life

2            I came to myself in a dark wood,

3            for the straight way was lost.

4            Ah, how hard it is to tell

5            the nature of that wood, savage, dense and harsh --

6            the very thought of it renews my fear!

7            It is so bitter death is hardly more so.

              8            But to set forth the good I found

9            I will recount the other things I saw.

10         How I came there I cannot really tell,

11         I was so full of sleep

12         when I forsook the one true way.

13         But when I reached the foot of a hill,

14         there where the valley ended

15         that had pierced my heart with fear,

16         looking up, I saw its shoulders

17         arrayed in the first light of the planet

18         that leads men straight, no matter what their road.

19         Then the fear that had endured

20         in the lake of my heart, all the night

21         I spent in such distress, was calmed.

22         And as one who, with laboring breath,

23         has escaped from the deep to the shore

24         turns and looks back at the perilous waters,

25         so my mind, still in flight,

26         turned back to look once more upon the pass

27         no mortal being ever left alive.

28         After I rested my wearied flesh a while,

29         I took my way again along the desert slope,

30         my firm foot always lower than the other.

                             Inferno, Canto 1, 1-30.

Finally, hear Dante’s beautiful Italian with a recitation of Inferno’s Canto 1 by the great Italian actor, Roberto Benigni.

Blessed Mother, ever Virgin, pray for us.

Photos: Yellow and Purple Crocuses

I have had these crocuses for over twenty, maybe twenty-five years!  Or should I say croci for plural—but I have never heard anyone say “croci.”  I have had them so long I cannot remember when I planted them.  Every year, they come up at the end of February to the beginning of March, and they come up faithfully.  I take them as a sign that winter is over, and though spring may not be fully here yet, it is a sign that it is within spitting distance. 

This year they came out late.  They popped up just about the middle of last week, which was past the midpoint of March.  This is the latest they have sprung that I can remember.  But guided by God’s diurnal hand, they arrived.  Their tardiness is understandable this year.  We had one of the coldest winters in memory and two big snowfalls.  The last one was at the end of February, a twenty-four inch pile of flakes that transformed Staten Island into a tundra.  I was worried the crocuses would never make it with all that snow.  I did try to remove the snow from their ground, but I didn’t know if the snow had aborted their resurrection.  But God is in control, and here they are.

 

They are only about three inches high.  Cute little things.  The flowers last two to three weeks.

The yellows always seem to come up a few days earlier than the purples.  I’m going to look for more and plant them for next year.

Sunday Meditation: Waiting For Jesus

Today is another long reading.  For the Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year A the Gospel reading is of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.  This is such a deep and profound passage that most homilies cannot do it justice.  Homilists may focus on the delay that Jesus takes to go to Bethany, or focus on Martha’s greeting when Jesus arrives, or, of course, the raising of Lazarus.  We’ll get to those in the embedded homilies.  But here are a few details that seem to go unnoticed.  John tells us that “Mary was the one who had anointed the Lord with perfumed oil and dried his feet with her hair.”  That is interesting.  That happened in a different Gospel; it’s from Lk 7:36-50.  Here’s another interesting detail.  When Jesus is warned by the apostles that the Jews will be trying to kill him, the Apostle Thomas, the same so called “Doubting Thomas,” says, “Let us also go to die with him.”  He may have been skeptical but he is willing to die for Christ.

 

Here is today’s Gospel reading.

 

 

Now a man was ill, Lazarus from Bethany,

the village of Mary and her sister Martha.

Mary was the one who had anointed the Lord with perfumed oil

and dried his feet with her hair;

it was her brother Lazarus who was ill.

So the sisters sent word to him saying,

“Master, the one you love is ill.”

When Jesus heard this he said,

“This illness is not to end in death,

but is for the glory of God,

that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”

Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.

So when he heard that he was ill,

he remained for two days in the place where he was.

Then after this he said to his disciples,

“Let us go back to Judea.”

The disciples said to him,

“Rabbi, the Jews were just trying to stone you,

and you want to go back there?”

Jesus answered,

“Are there not twelve hours in a day?

If one walks during the day, he does not stumble,

because he sees the light of this world.

But if one walks at night, he stumbles,

because the light is not in him.”

He said this, and then told them,

“Our friend Lazarus is asleep,

but I am going to awaken him.”

So the disciples said to him,

“Master, if he is asleep, he will be saved.”

But Jesus was talking about his death,

while they thought that he meant ordinary sleep.

So then Jesus said to them clearly,

“Lazarus has died.

And I am glad for you that I was not there,

that you may believe.

Let us go to him.”

So Thomas, called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples,

“Let us also go to die with him.”

 

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus

had already been in the tomb for four days.

Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, only about two miles away.

And many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary

to comfort them about their brother.

When Martha heard that Jesus was coming,

she went to meet him;

but Mary sat at home.

Martha said to Jesus,

“Lord, if you had been here,

my brother would not have died.

But even now I know that whatever you ask of God,

God will give you.”

Jesus said to her,

“Your brother will rise.”

Martha said to him,

“I know he will rise,

in the resurrection on the last day.”

Jesus told her,

“I am the resurrection and the life;

whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live,

and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.

Do you believe this?”

She said to him, “Yes, Lord.

I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God,

the one who is coming into the world.”

 

When she had said this,

she went and called her sister Mary secretly, saying,

“The teacher is here and is asking for you.”

As soon as she heard this,

she rose quickly and went to him.

For Jesus had not yet come into the village,

but was still where Martha had met him.

So when the Jews who were with her in the house comforting her saw Mary get up quickly and go out, they followed her,

presuming that she was going to the tomb to weep there.

When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him,

she fell at his feet and said to him,

“Lord, if you had been here,

my brother would not have died.”

When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping,

he became perturbed and deeply troubled, and said,

“Where have you laid him?”

They said to him, “Sir, come and see.”

And Jesus wept.

So the Jews said, “See how he loved him.”

But some of them said,

“Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man

have done something so that this man would not have died?”

 

So Jesus, perturbed again, came to the tomb.

It was a cave, and a stone lay across it.

Jesus said, “Take away the stone.”

Martha, the dead man’s sister, said to him,

“Lord, by now there will be a stench;

he has been dead for four days.”

Jesus said to her,

“Did I not tell you that if you believe

you will see the glory of God?”

So they took away the stone.

And Jesus raised his eyes and said,

“Father, I thank you for hearing me.

I know that you always hear me;

but because of the crowd here I have said this,

that they may believe that you sent me.”

And when he had said this,

He cried out in a loud voice,

“Lazarus, come out!”

The dead man came out,

tied hand and foot with burial bands,

and his face was wrapped in a cloth.

So Jesus said to them,

“Untie him and let him go.”

 

Now many of the Jews who had come to Mary

and seen what he had done began to believe in him.

~Jn:11:1-45

 

Dr. Brant Pitre provides a full explanation of the reading.

 

Dr. Pitre:

‘Martha said to him oh I know that he will rise again in the Resurrection on the last day.   Jesus said to her “I am the resurrection and the life;” he who believes in me though he die yet he shall live and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.  Do you believe this?  She said to him yes Lord I believe that you are the Christ, the son of God he who is coming into the world.’  Okay pause there notice what just happened?  Lazarus is dead; he's been dead 4 days.  When Jesus comes Mary says, ‘you know if you'd have been here this wouldn't have happened,’ which the reader now knows isn't true because Jesus knew about Lazarus sickness and that he was going to die but he stayed longer and allowed it to happen.  Why does Jesus wait two days longer to go to Judea?  Well this an interesting thing. John says very specifically that Jesus did this because he loved Lazarus and Mary and Martha.  That's a very mysterious thing.  I mean can you imagine a situation where let's say I'm giving a lecture in class at the Seminary and my wife calls and says you know your daughter is very sick right, very, very sick, I think she might be dying and I would respond okay well I'm going to stay here at work a couple of days longer because I love her.  I mean that's totally counterintuitive; it doesn't make any sense whatsoever, but this Jesus isn't an ordinary man.  He doesn't have an Ordinary Love for Lazarus; he allows Lazarus his friend to suffer and die because he's going to bring him back from the grave and in the living.

What Dr. Pitre calls “counterintuitive” I would call a non sequitur.  There are several what strike me as non sequiturs in this passage.  For instance, when the apostles warn Jesus that the Jews will be looking to kill Him, he gives what strikes me as a non sequitur response: “Are there not twelve hours in a day?  If one walks during the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world.  But if one walks at night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.” 

What’s with the non sequiturs?  Dr. Pitre continues:

 

St John Chrysostom said this about this quote: “He said many are offended when they see any of those who are pleasing to God suffering anything terrible.  Those who are offended by this however do not know that those who are especially dear to God have it as their lot to endure such things, as we see in the case of Lazarus who was also one of the friends of Christ but was also sick.”  So what Chrysostom is pointing out here is there's a mysterious reality about the Christian life, that those who are called to a special Holiness, those who in a sense God loves in a special way, he often frequently allows to suffer in a special way; he allows to suffer in a great way.

I have called this a non sequitur, but that’s not quite accurate.  What strikes as a non sequitur is identifying one of the paradoxes of Christianity and of human life.  Suffering and death actually has a purpose beyond common thought.  There is a mystery behind God’s logic.

 

I found Cardinal Blasé Cupich pastoral homily unique and insightful.

 

Cardinal Cupich connects Jesus’ delay in this Gospel passage with the time of World War II, a time of great tragedy.

Cardinal Cupich:

An Irish playwright by the name of Samuel Beckett wrote a play that became very famous called Waiting for Godot.  It was a play on words.  Waiting for God was something that he took up. How is it that these terrible atrocities could happen? What was God doing in all of this? God seemed to be out on a vacation, inattentive to the needs of humanity.  Today in this gospel text, Jesus gives us an answer about what God is doing and where God is.  We first of all see that Jesus finds out that Lazarus is dying and he waits until he dies.  It is in that waiting period, that time between the sufferings that we have and knowing what the result is that can be so anguishing.  Maybe as we wait for a diagnosis or we wait to see whether or not someone hurt in an accident is going to survive. or the waiting that comes just in therapy and healing where the end result is not certain.  Jesus tells us he's there in the waiting because the life that he gives is not just a matter of continuation of our existence but rather it's the word, “Zoe,” which is the breathing of God's life in us, that God wants to reveal in the waiting that he's present to us, that God is revealing himself in those moments and then we begin to see.

In those moments of waiting, hanging on the point of a needle to see how some tragedy turns out, God is breathing into us, revealing Himself.  “He's there with us in that moment in which the human frailty is so very present.”  Cardinal Cupich continues:

 

So today Jesus answers Beckett, Waiting for Godot, waiting for God is in fact exactly what we should be looking for in life. That God is present in the inbetweens of life. God is present in the smelliness, the stinkiness of life, the things that we would otherwise want to avoid. When everyone abandons us, God is present there.  And finally, God is present and has to be present in the community that does its best to make sure that the bonds of oppression injustice are untied.

 

 

Sunday Meditation: “Untie him and let him go.”

 

Here is a wonderful hymn in the mode of a country song on this topic, “Jesus Raised Lazarus from the Tomb.”

 

When he's four days

And All hope is gone

Lord we don’t understand

Why you waited so long.

 

But His way is God’s way,

Not yours or mine.

And isn’t it great,

When He’s four days late

But He’s still on time.

 

Performed by the Frank Brownstead Choir.