No.813: Last Week at the Farmhouse // The Holiest Days of the Year

This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission of any sale made at no extra cost to you.

Last Sunday, Palm Sunday, we entered into the holiest days of the Church Year, the days in which we celebrate the completion of the mission for which our Lord Jesus was sent into the world: His suffering, dying and rising from the dead for our eternal salvation. So singular is this time for us that we call “Holy Week” the days from Palm Sunday to the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday. Of all the weeks of the Church Year, during which God faithfully pours forth His grace upon us, we refer to one week only as Holy Week, because the source of all grace is found in the events which took place during this week. (by Cardinal Raymond L. Burke, from here)

Alleluia alleluia!  Christ is risen, Christ is truly risen!  When this post is published, it will be Easter Monday, so the Holy Week readings and things down below will be unhelpful until next year.  Mediating on Our Lord’s death is always a fruitful practice, so maybe you could use them after Paschaltide?

Contemplating with Art // 

Reading //

• Holy Thursday Meditation on the Blessed Eucharist from Fr. Michael Mueller // “’Who’ asks St. John Chrysostom, ‘will give us of His flesh that we may be filled?’ (Job 31:31). This Christ has done, allowing Himself not only to be seen, but to be touched too, and to be eaten, so that our teeth pierce His Flesh, and all are filled with His love.”
• Stations of the Cross by Saint Francis of Assisi
• Discourse 16. Mental Sufferings of Our Lord in His Passion from Cardinal John Henry Newman // Long but really good.
• Sermon for Good Friday on the Passion of Christ from St. Francis de Sales // “He could have redeemed us in a thousand other ways than that of His Son’s death. But He did not will to do so, for what may have been sufficient for our salvation was not sufficient for His love; and to show us how much He loved us, this divine Son died the cruelest and most ignominious of deaths, that of the Cross.”
• The Charcoal Fire, a poem by Fr. Timothy J. Draper

Watching/Listening //

• the Learning to Look series from Fr. Hugh at St. Michael’s Abbey // Short little nuggets of beauty and wisdom.  Makes me want to pull How Catholic Art Saved the Faith: The Triumph of Beauty and Truth in Counter-Reformation Art by Elizabeth Lev off of my TBR shelf.
• Tenebrae with St. Michael’s Abbey // “The liturgy of Tenebrae (Latin for “darkness”), which dates back to the ninth century, is a special expression of Matins and Lauds unique to Holy Week. The psalms chanted during Tenebrae ground Our Lord’s Passion in the context of Salvation History.”  There were livestreams to watch on each day of the Triduum.  Beautiful.

Loving //

• The Life of Sr. Mary Wilhelmina by the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles // “Sister Wilhelmina understood that true holiness consists not in niceness or pleasant feelings but in a battle of wills; she was determined, at all costs, to surrender her strong will to an even stronger one: the will of God.”