Keeping vigil... in silence and in trust... (Holy Saturday)

   Holy Saturday is sacred as the day of the Lord's rest; it has been called 

the "Second Sabbath" after creation. The day is and should be the most calm 

and quiet day of the entire Church year, a day broken by no liturgical function 

and is chiefly a day of solemn vigil for the Lord’s resurrection. 

HOLY SATURDAY

"Holy Saturday is the day of God’s silence. It must be a day of silence. We must do everything possible so that it is a day of silence, as that Day, which was the day of God’s silence.  Jesus placed in the sepulcher shares with the whole of humanity the tragedy of death as a silence that speaks and expresses love as solidarity with all those ever abandoned, which the Son of God reaches filling the emptiness that only the infinite mercy of God the Father can fill. God is silent, but out of love. In this day love, that silent love, becomes expectation of life in the resurrection. We think of Holy Saturday: it will do us good to think of the silence of Our Lady, “the Believer,” who in silence awaited the Resurrection. Our Lady must be the icon for us of that Holy Saturday. To think much of how Our Lady lived that Holy Saturday, in expectation. It is a love that does not doubt, but that hopes in the Lord’s word, and which becomes manifest and splendid on Easter day." 

Pope Francis, Wednesday Audience, 03/23/16

"The last day of the Holy Week:  a fruitful stillness before the breathtaking action of the night. 

Perhaps only the greatest Russian writers have succeeded 

in painting it as it is, a pause, a last moment of waiting, 

made holy by the Lord's rest in the tomb.

The Church is waiting at the tomb and weeps.  

She sees where the Lord has been laid, where the woman had 

buried Adam, where man is buried where he had come to grief 

through her evil counsel. She sees it and weeps. She weeps at the 

Lord's tomb, as the Lord wept for Lazarus: for sin which killed 

the giver of all life. But her tears are soft, and she is at peace. . . .

The death of Adam has lost its terrors in the tomb 
of Christ. The death for obedience' sake has snuffed out sin. 

No longer does a massa damnata blunder on from sin to sin 

and death to death, but the body of the obedient Christ 

rests in hope.  A foreboding of the happy chance of fault 

which merited such and so great a redeemer. It is a foreboding 

of the blessedness of suffering earning 'the name which is 

above all names', and the 'glory of God the Father', which 

makes the seers — men and the Church — at peace 

and full of hope." - D. Aemiliana Löhr, The Great Week

“Today a great silence reigns on earth, 

a great silence and a great stillness. A great silence because 

the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God 

has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have 

slept ever since the world began. . . He has gone to search 

for Adam, our first father, as for a lost sheep." 

From ancient homily, Liturgy of the Hours, Holy Saturday

Ancient Homily for Holy Saturday - YouTube (7:47 mins)

"... Holy Saturday...the more I reflect on it, the more 

this seems to be fitting for the nature of our human life:  

we are still awaiting Easter; we are not yet standing 

in the full light but walking toward it full of trust." 

- Pope Benedict XVI, Milestones: Memoirs, 1927-1977 

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Divine Mercy Novena:  Day #2

 Click here: DIVINE MERCY NOVENA PRAYERS

Death by love (GOOD FRIDAY)...

    O crux, ave spes unica!

(Hail, O cross, our only hope!)

GOOD FRIDAY

"His side was pierced as Adam's was; yet there came forth not a

woman who, being beguiled, was to be a death-bearer, but a

fountain of life that regenerates the world by its two streams:

the one to renew us in the baptismal font and clothe us with the

garment of immortality, the other to feed us, the reborn, at the

table of God, just as babes are nourished with milk."

Bishop Theodore of Cyr (15th century)

From the treatise:  On the Incarnation of the Lord

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Souls have all the same price,

which is that of the Precious Blood of Jesus."

St Charles de Foucauld

"Nature is in mourning covered with darkness during the Holy Hour of the first Good Friday.  The chants of the heavenly Jerusalem are interrupted.  The entire court of Heaven waits in order to receive the last throb of the Heart of the Man-God, the victim of Golgotha.

Fervent loving souls,

we are truly at the summit of Calvary:

it is the Holy Hour!

A loud voice resounds in the heights, a voice that says: "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.'  And bending His lacerated Head, Jesus Crucified dies of love.  It is His Heart which out of love for us has brought Him to death.  All glory to His loving Heart which gave us life and which now is stilled in death!"- Fr Mateo Crawley-Boevey

Image above:  Christ Crucified ~ Viktor Vasnetsov (1896)

"Do grant, oh my God,

that when my lips approach Yours to kiss You,

I may taste the gall that was given to You;

when my shoulders lean against Yours,

make me feel Your scourging;

when my flesh is united with Yours, 

in the Holy Eucharist,

make me feel Your passion;

when my head comes near Yours,

make me feel Your thorns;
when my heart is close to Yours,

make me feel Your spear."

St. Gemma Galgani

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We adore Thee, O Christ, and we praise Thee

because by Thy holy Cross 
Thou has redeemed the world. 

"Your love is my only martyrdom.

The more I feel it burning in me,
The more my soul desires you…
Jesus, make me die of love for you."

St Thérèse of Lisieux
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"I desire that Adoration take place for the 

intention of imploring Mercy for the world," 
words of Jesus to St Faustina of the Blessed Sacrament

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Divine Mercy Novena begins today

 Click here: DIVINE MERCY NOVENA PRAYERS

He went away, yet remained... (Holy Thursday)

 

The Paschal Triduum begins with the Evening Mass In Cena Domini on Holy Thursday, continues through the Friday of the Lord's Passion, reaches its summit in the Solemn Paschal Vigil, and comes to a close with Sunday Vespers of the Lord's Resurrection - a full three days - evening Thursday through evening Sunday (According to the General Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar).

HOLY THURSDAY

Institution of the Sacraments of Holy Eucharist and Holy Orders

“Consider, on your knees, the mystery of God’s 

love for us, that He didn't want to leave us orphans.

 … For Christ knew our hunger for Himself.  

He knew that we would be walking around in the darkness 

of a thousand wars and miseries throughout this life. …

This is Holy Thursday.  This is when the Christ we are 

talking about took an ordinary piece of bread and a little wine 

and changed it into His Body and His Blood. 

… Remember this day always, year after year:  

the day of Christ’s infinite love, when He went away 

and yet He remained, in Bread and Wine, 

and in the priest. …

In His immense love, Christ chose men who would 

have His hands and His feet, in whom He could walk, 

in whom He could forgive sins, who could lift Him up, 

who could give us the sacrament of the Most Holy Eucharist 

– the Bread and Wine, 

which He said makes for everlasting life!  

The incredible love of God is visible to us! ..."

Catherine de Hueck Doherty

Painting above: The Last Supper - Nesterenko, Vasily Igorevich 

"Without the priest, the passion and death 
of our Lord would be of no avail.  
It is the priest who continues the work 

of redemption here on earth... 

Leave a parish for twenty years without a priest 
and they will end by worshiping the beasts there...

The priest is not a priest for himself,

he is a priest for you."

"O, how great is the priest!...

If he realized what he is, he would die."

St John Vianney
Patron of all priests

Pray, pray , pray for our priests!
They rely on our prayers - we rely on our priests!

As Father John Hardon, S.J., once said, “praying and offering God 

sacrifices for the priesthood are indispensably important,” 

because “there is no Catholic Church without the priesthood.”

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"When people want to destroy religion they begin by attacking the priest;

for when there is no priest, there is no sacrifice, 

and when there is no sacrifice, there is no religion."

St John Vianney

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Prayer for Priests to pray today...
and tomorrow ... and every day... 

 (Wriitten by St Charles Borremeo,
Patron of Bishops and Seminarians)

O holy Mother of God, pray for the priests your Son 

has chosen to serve the Church. Help them, 

by your intercession, to be holy, zealous, and chaste. 

Make them models of virtue in the service of God’s people. Help them be pious in meditation, efficacious 

in preaching, and zealous in the daily offering 

of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. 

Help them administer the sacraments with joy. 

+ Amen +

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Learn more about praying for priests... 

Seven Sisters Apostolate

Inquire through Apostolate 

about a FREE holy Card with this prayer (above)

of St Charles Borremeo

The humility of Jesus...

    Wednesday of Holy Week

I offered my back to those who beat me,

my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard; I did not 
hide my face from mocking and spitting. - Isaiah 50:6

"The humility of Jesus

can be seen in the crib,

in the exile to Egypt, in the hidden life,in the 

inability to make people understand Him,

in the desertion of His apostles,

in the hatred of His persecutors,

in all the terrible suffering 

and death of His Passion, and now ...

in His permanent state of humility 

in the tabernacle, where He has reduced 

Himself to such a small particle of bread that 

the priest can hold Him with two fingers. 

The more we empty ourselves,

the more room we give God to fill us."

St Teresa of Calcutta

Painting image:  The Flagellation of Christ - Guercino

Ten Ways to Prepare for Easter and Mercy Sunday - SpiritualDirection.com

Grant me today five graces...

 Tuesday of Holy Week

"If you can not soar up as high as Christ sitting on 

His throne, behold Him hanging on His cross. 

Rest in Christ's Passion and live willingly in 

His holy wounds." - Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ

"Oh, my God, through the precious
Blood of Jesus and His five wounds, 
grant me today five graces: 

the conversion of a sinner, 
the conversion of an unbeliever, 
the salvation of someone 
dying in peril of everlasting death; 
a vocation to the priesthood 
or to the religious life; 
 and, for some new soul, 
the grace of entering into and
savoring the mystery of the Eucharist." 

Prayer of Elisabeth Leseur (+1914)

Image above: Angels Bearing Instruments of the Passion (detail from altarpiece) ~ Rogier van der Weyden (+1464)

 

"The Body of Christ (Eucharist) will unite 

the Body of Christ (Church)." - Bishop Paul V Dudley

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Let us especially be mindful of and in prayer for 

the thousands of Catechumens and Candidates 

who are preparing to fully enter the Catholic Church on

Easter vigil and participate in her rich sacramental life!

Life in abundance! - John 10:10