Now this post would have been really timely to present back in 2020 when everyone was homebound, but I’m homebound now so, I’m offering these ideas to help you if you need it with your observance of Holy Week. I have Covid so I’m stuck observing from my bed.
1) Watch the Holy Thursday mass. I’ve followed the Daily TV mass for most of Lent, so I turned to them.
Bonus if you follow along with your Magnificat if you have a subscription. If you don’t, I highly recommend making that part of your Easter Devotion going forward. They always have the readings for the mass, the Saint of the Day and good reflections that help one go deeper into the Scritures.
2) Fast. This is a time of fasting, so even if you’ve stunk up your Lent up to now, figure out something you can surrender cheerfully and as a prayer for God, to help place yourself at His mercy, and to recognize how much God desires a full reunion with our souls. It’s not a speed round Lent observation, it’s a serious attempt to observe this sacred time.
3) Pray the Rosary –and go for all of the Rosary –you heard me, all four sets of the Mysteries, Joyful, Sorrowful, Luminous and Glorious. It will take you about an hour if you use a guide. “Could you not stay for one hour?” seems like a call to put aside something of our desires to make time our own. You tithe this time; offering your prayers both as a discipline, and as a meditation on the reality of all of Christ’s life. I like “Come Pray the Rosary” as a resource because they include video from the holy land as part of their background for the prayers and that lets me see where Jesus walked.
4) Watch one of the good films of the life of Christ, Passion of Christ, The Miracle Maker, Greatest Story Ever Told, or of this season, Prince of Egypt or The Ten Commandments and or the Chosen series. You can also watch The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, or Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings. I know there are others out there, but I haven’t seen them and so I won’t recommend something I haven’t seen.
5) Want to think about your faith as part of the Triduum? Bishop Baron’s Catholicism series is also excellent for reflection and examination of our faith. I also love and I do mean love, Fr. John Riccardo’s reflection on the Prodigal Son. However, in honor of the week, I’m including a different talk from him here:
6) Something I’ve never done before but am enjoying, is listening to Bach’s Saint John’s Passion.
It doesn’t matter that I don’t comprehend a word, I can grasp something of the story and it is a lovely way to quiet the mind so the heart can listen more.
7) Write prayer cards for people you love. Mail them. Someone you know needs prayers.
8) Prepare a simple family meal and eat together. Discuss how the past 40 days have been, and what spiritual fruit has come from whatever has been done to try and prepare for this week.
9) Parents, consider washing your children’s feet this evening after dinner, before desert. Read aloud that Gospel, and explain that in the Domestic Church, the whole purpose of family, is to learn how to outdo each other in showing love. We are to always be about the business of washing each other’s feet. Our vocation, whatever it turns out to be, involves discovering whose feet we will spend our lives washing.
10) To me, there is a special and peculiar ache that comes from spending time at the empty tabernacle. It is the closest we come to understanding how those apostles must have felt after the crucifixion. Not being able to see the Eucharist, something we can approach in adoration at all other times of the year in adoration chapels and at the dialy mass, is unusual and only possible during these sacred hours following the Holy Thursday mass until the Easter Vigil.
Lastly, wait in joyful hope for the Easter that is, and is coming. Have a blessed Triduum.
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