Holy Week

   The last week in Lent is so called and among the ancients was known also as "The Great Week," because of the important events in the last week in our Lord's Life which it commemorates. It is a week of solemn and awful memories, a holy time of deepest devotion and searchings of heart. The Church has always kept it as such. From day to day, amid the solemnities of worship, we follow our Lord in His Passion, live it over again, as in Psalm and Hymn, in Proper Lessons, in Epistles and Gospels and pleading, prayers the whole record of the Royal Reception, the final Teachings, Betrayal, the cruel mockery, the desertion, and the awful Agony on the Cross, the Death and the Burial of the Lord of Life is solemnly recited as a memorial before God. Each day is significant, thus: The first day of the week, the Sixth Sunday in Lent, is called Palm Sunday, in reference to the palms strewn in our Lord's way on His entrance into Jerusalem; Monday and Tuesday witnessed the final disputations with the Jews; Wednesday stands out as the day of the Lord's Betrayal and the beginning of the events which reached their climax on Good Friday; Thursday is ever to be remembered as the day of the Commands, first, concerning love, and secondly, the institution of the Blessed Sacrament with its "Do this in remembrance of Me"; Good Friday, the day of the Crucifixion and Death, and Saturday, Easter Even, which commemorates the Descent of our Lord's soul into Hell while His Body rested in the grave.