Holy Week and Remembering

Central to Catholic piety is the notion of liturgical remembering. During this upcoming Holy Week we remember and we celebrate the most sacred mystery of our faith. Liturgical remembering is more than reminiscing or psychological recall. Remembering in a liturgical sense is to retell the stories of our redemption in Christ and in that to re-experience the saving actions of God in our own lives.

As usual, our remembering is done with human words, actions, signs, and symbols. These human tools and experiences are, through grace, intertwined with God's Words and Christ's actions in the sacraments of the Church. Through our worship rites, Christ once again shows himself to us, and we in our response appropriate his presence in our lives. In Christ we are incorporated in the actions of Christ in the community of believers.

To remember is to experience, in liturgical recall, the actions of Christ through the centuries. Within the faith and actions of the Church we come to know Christ crucified and risen from the dead. As we tell that Easter story in the scriptures and in sacramental gesture we are gathered into the saving actions of the Father in our human history.

Person and Community
Our prayers and worship involve us in the effective and affective memories as individual believers within the lived memory of the community. In this personal, yet communal memory, we are incorporated in the Church, the Body of Christ. In Christ we once again pass from death to life. We come to know the Paschal Mystery, which is the Christian Passover. It is movement in Christ from sin and death to new life and resurrection.

Experiencing the Signs
Recalling the signs includes everything from words, to actions, to colors, and smells. This provides a rich overflow of how we come to experience God in Christ.

• Passion Sunday (Palm Sunday) begins with a splash of red color and the blessing and procession of palms. The day speaks of blood and victory of the Lord among his people. Central to the celebration is the proclamation of the Lord's Passion.

• Holy Thursday quietly begins the Triduum with the Evening Mass of the Lord's Supper. Simple, but solemn decorations, a bare altar to be dressed later, the washing of the feet invite us to begin the Christian Passover from death to life. The Eucharistic Actions speak to us of "taking, blessing, breaking (pouring), and giving. Both with the Eucharist and Foot Washing we are urged "to remember" what the Lord did.
• Good Friday invites faith with red again and a bare church and altar. This room and place invites us to again hear the Passion proclaimed, to receive the Cross in victory and to venerate it as an appropriation of the mystery in our lives. Even communion is celebrated in a simple and direct way. The Church waits in silence.
• Holy Saturday is the great gathering of the Church awaiting the Lord's Resurrection. The symbols and actions overflow from the lighting of the Easter Fire from which the Paschal Candle is lit. Christ enters among the community as the Church grows and literally glows in the light which is Christ himself. The Word of God tells the story of God's saving actions from creation of the world to redemption in Christ's death and rising. Bells are rung, lights brighten, and we hear the hopeful story of the resurrection. Further actions show God's actions among us in the baptism and anointing of new believers among us. Again the major symbol and memory is the Eucharistic "taking, blessing, breaking (pouring), and giving" at the Lord's Table.
• Easter allows us the experience of the first disciples, when they came to know Jesus raised from the dead in his peace and in his eating at the victory table after his resurrection.

In all these symbols we remember how we came to be saved in Christ in his death and rising. In him we walk from death to life, from darkness to light, from sin to forgiveness. That is the story we remember and tell to one another and to our world.

CDH