Tuesday in Holy Week

By Br Andy Opsahl | Given the grim, painful aspects of Christ’s Passion and their reminder to us of the darkness of human sin, it can be easy to approach Holy Week as something heavy and draining, emotionally.

Given the grim, painful aspects of Christ’s Passion and their reminder to us of the darkness of human sin, it can be easy to approach Holy Week as something heavy and draining, emotionally. The truth is that Holy Week, and especially Good Friday, ought to make us feel lighter about the fact of pain in our lives and in those of others. Pain in its various forms is a reality with which humanity has afflicted itself due to sin having entered the world. This week we contemplate Christ’s defeat of all that pain on the cross. Holy Week, as well as Lent, is a time for human beings to remember the origin of darkness in their lives and the only true path back to the light, which is that of Christ’s cross. Often Lent and Holy Week seem like heavier, sadder times of the year because they direct us to look closer at the woundedness that afflicts us all year long, regardless of how we may try to distract ourselves from it. While, in a way, Holy Week is a time for sadness and contemplation of darkness, it is also a time of hope and relief as we meditate on the only authentic antidote to that sadness.