Holy Week...

Is one of the hardest weeks of the year for me spiritually. 40 days is hard but that last bit, at the very end. Where you almost have to squint to see the finish line, it is right there and if you just reach hard enough, you could even touch it. Victory is within your grasp, but not until Holy Saturday at midnight. When the Holy Week turns into Easter. That joyful season, not day, where we get to celebrate and rejoice in our Lord.

And it's so close. Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday. This year I feel like a kid again, getting excited and just wanting the day to come faster. I want to be able to celebrate, to sing songs with gusto and joy. Solemnity and seriousness has never come easy to me. Lent, is always a trying part of the liturgical year. That being said perhaps I need to focus more on it but how can anyone when the end is so wonderful?

To quote Samwise Gamgee:

 Frodo: I can't do this, Sam.

Sam: I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.

Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?

Sam: That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for. (imdb.com)

There's a new understanding every year as I mature of just what Holy Week is, and this year during the passion I cried a little. I cried listening to the passion of our Lord, I've never cried before. Holy Thursday and Holy Saturday are going to be a little different, in growing up I have a job now where I will need to work. So, I will have to find a way to remember these days in the quiet of my workplace. To remember what happened and who was there and best I can by myself and the Lord in prayer. And then Easter will come when it does and we can all celebrate it. It will be a great occasion and I will get to spend some time with the family. But until then, Good Holy Week. Because it is a good week, and a blessed day.

ciao 4 now,

Arwen