The last days of Jesus in his humanity were so intense that they changed the world forever! How can we live this Holy Week with intensity and spiritual depth? First of all, no matter how good or bad our Lent has been, even if it seems like a “failure,” the important thing is to finish it well! In fact, the first person to enter Paradise was a thief, a murderer crucified with Jesus. The important thing is, as St. Paul says, “Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” ” Phil 3:13-14
What personal meaning do we want to give to our Holy Week? How can we avoid limiting it to an emotional historical remembrance?
As I write these lines, the world news is full of bombs and suffering. But at this very moment, the liturgy invites us to meditate on Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman (Jn 4:5-42, Gospel of the Third Sunday of Lent).
The deepest meaning of Holy Week is the passage from death to life, in other words, salvation for humanity through the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
This text about the Samaritan woman opens up some avenues for entering into this powerful liturgical season, which brings to life the passage from death to life in specific areas of our lives.
1 John 4:6: Jesus is tired and thirsty. There is another moment in this Gospel when Jesus is thirsty, and that is on the cross (John 19:28). Jesus is tired of searching for those to whom he came to proclaim the Kingdom. As with the woman of Samaria, Jesus thirsts to be in relationship with each one of us. May these holy days be days of intimate relationship with Christ, through prayer, sobriety, silence, liturgical celebrations… to welcome “the water that I will give him (and) which will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (v. 14).
2 John 4:23-24: According to Jesus, being in relationship with God “in Spirit and in Truth” means becoming a “true” worshipper of God, and this is what God seeks. This woman from Samaria allowed the Lord to bring truth into her life. He revealed her sin to her. The results were immediate: she was set free and joyfully shared her testimony without fear. In this intimate relationship with Jesus, let us also dare to let the truth be known in our hidden places so that we may be set free. Let us go to a priest to confess our sins and fully embrace the joy of mercy and the salvation that He desires.
3- Jn 4:40-42: Jesus stays in Samaria for two days, and after those two days the Samaritans believe in Him, no longer because of the words of the woman who testified, but because they have met Jesus Himself. Can we compare these two days of Jesus in Samaria to Holy Friday and Holy Saturday, those mysterious days when He descends into our hell, our confinement, to save us from death and bring us back to life?
May this Holy Week be the week when we welcome Jesus’ thirst to dwell with and within us, when we let Him bring light into our dark places; let us live the sacrament of reconciliation. This is why Christ died, to save us from sin, so let us not let Him die in vain!
Finally, during this Holy Week, we are invited to abandon our wells, where we exhaust ourselves drawing water by our own strength, and go to the source, that is, to the foot of the Cross of Christ, from whose pierced body flows the water of eternal life!
4- Jn 4:42: Then, like the Samaritans, from the Easter Vigil onwards, we will be able to sing with overflowing joy, as “true worshipers,” “He is the Savior of the world!” He is risen! It is time to let ourselves be carried away, filled with the Spirit, in this moment of freshness and joy, proclaiming the Exultet, a moment that exists nowhere else! It is the time of the “great Easter Alleluia!” in a long liturgical day that begins on Saturday evening and lasts until Sunday evening, when the Easter candle burns 24 hours non-stop to signify it! Yes, He is risen! He is truly risen!
“There is something I find extraordinary, which is that it is new every time. Since we are talking about salvation, I feel that I can enter Holy Week with the expectation that something will change and that there is a point of suffering or sin in my life that I can give back to God.” Bishop Etienne Vetö
Nothing can resist the love of God, who humbled himself for us…