SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE EASTER
(PALM SUNDAY)
…To
live thus, to cram to-day with eternity and not with the next day, the
Christian has learnt and continues to learn (for the Christian is always
learning) from the Pattern. How did He manage to live without anxiety for
the next day-he who from the first instant of His public life when He
stepped forward as a teacher knew how His life would end, that the next day
was His crucifixion, knew this while the people exultantly hailed Him as
King (ah, bitter knowledge to have at precisely that moment!), knew when
they were crying, "Hosanna!", at His entry into Jerusalem that they would
cry, "Crucify Him!", and that it was to this end He made His entry; He who
bore every day the prodigious weight of this superhuman knowledge-how did He
manage to live without anxiety for the next day?
Kierkegaard: Christian
Discourses.
HOLY
MONDAY
THE
progress of these terrors are plainly shown us in our Lord's agony in the
garden, when the reality of this eternal death so broke in upon Him, so
awakened and stirred itself in Him, as to force great drops of blood to
sweat from His body...His agony was His entrance into the last eternal
terrors of the lost soul, into the real horrors of that dreadful eternal
death which man unredeemed must have died into when he left this world. We
are therefore not to consider our Lord's death upon the Cross as only the
death of that mortal body which was nailed to it, but we are to look upon
Him with wounded hearts, as fixed and fastened in the state of that two-fold
death, which was due to the fallen nature, out of which He could not come
till He could say, "It is finished; Father, into thy hands I commend my
spirit."
William Law: An Appeal.
HOLY
TUESDAY
HE
said to Judas, when he betrayed him: "Friend, wherefore art thou come?"
Just as if he had said: "Thou hatest me, and art mine enemy, yet I love thee
and am thy friend." ...As though God in human nature were saying: "I am
pure, simple Goodness, and therefore I cannot will or desire or rejoice in,
or do or give anything but goodness. If I am to reward thee for thy evil
and wickedness I must do it with goodness, for I am and have nothing else."
Theologia Germanica.
HOLY
WEDNESDAY
HIS
own single voice prostrated that great crowd ...For God lay hid in that
human flesh; and eternal day was so obscured in those human limbs, that with
lanterns and torches he was sought for to be slain by the darkness...And now
everywhere through the Gospel Christ is still saying: "I am He.”
St Augustine: Lectures on St
John.
GOD
withdrew his protection, but did not break the Union.
Anonymous, quoted by Aquinas:
Catena Aurea.
MAUNDY THURSDAY
JESUS
suffers in His passions the torments which men inflict upon Him; but in His
agony He suffers the torments which He inflicts on Himself; This is a.
suffering from no human, but an almighty hand, for He must be almighty to
bear it.
Pascal: Pensees.
HE
was pierced with love no less than with grief, and it was that wound of love
which made him so constantly to endure all the other...Christ pierced on the
cross is liber charitatis, "the very book of love" laid open before us.
Lancelot Andrewes: Sermon on
Good Friday, 1597.
GOOD
FRIDAY
JESUS
is alone on the earth, without anyone not only to feel and share His
suffering, but even to know of it; He and Heaven were alone in that
knowledge.
Pascal: Pensees.
THE
perfection of our knowledge is Christ; the perfection of our knowledge in,
or touching Christ, is the knowledge of Christ's piercing. This is the
chief sight; nay, in this sight are all sights; so that know this, and know
all.
Lancelot Andrewes: Sermon on
Good Friday, 1597.
THE
tree upon which were fixed the members of Him dying was even the chair of
the Master teaching.
St Augustine: Lectures on St
John.
EVERY
mystery of Christ's assumed mortality was fulfilled and his immortality
alone remained.
St Ambrose, quoted by Aquinas:Catena
Aurea.
THOU,
the Life, wert laid in the grave, O Christ; and the hosts of the angels
shuddered, praising thy humility.
Ritual of the Orthodox Church.
HOLY
SATURDAY
THEY
(Joseph and Nicodemus) answered (the Blessed Virgin) and said: ' 'We sorrow
and mourn with all our hearts for all that is done to him, and fain would we
have helped him, but we could not overcome wickedness with right,
nevertheless this little service shall we do to our Lord." Then rose they up
and made them ready to take him down.
St Bonaventure: The Privity of
the Passion.
IT
was not written by hazard: "Joseph wrapped Christ's body in a clean
winding-sheet, and placed it in a new monument," and that “he rolled a great
stone," because all things around the body of Jesus are clean, and new, and
exceeding great.
Origen: St Matthew.
