My reflection is from the Little Black Book:
“This week, the Church begins a solemn time known as Holy Week.
The prayerful remembrance of the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus was especially important to the early Christians. They called it the Great Week because God did great things this week.
The earliest record of a Holy Week celebration was chronicled in the fourth century by a Christian woman named Egeria who was on a three-year pilgrimage to the Holy Land and the adjoining countries. She wrote of a Palm Sunday liturgy, followed by a procession through the streets of Jerusalem, a Holy Thursday Eucharist, a Good Friday liturgy and then a Saturday Easter Vigil.
Eventually these liturgies caught on throughout the Christian world. Prior to the First Council of Nicaea in 325, the Church primarily celebrated a Christian Passover on the night between Saturday and Easter Sunday. Then, Good Friday and Holy Saturday were observed as holy days. later the church added Wednesday, the day of Judas betrayal. By the third century, the time had extended to a full week.
Later, Saint Athanasius (ca. 296-373), the Bishop of Alexandria, and Saint Epiphanius of Constantia (310-403), the bishop of Salmis, Cyprus, introduced the term ‘Holy Week’.”
Let us make this a very special week where we come closer to God each day.
