Holy Week at a Glance

 This is the essence of Holy Week, the week leading to Easter. Sometimes it’s helpful to break things down to the simplest element.

Tomorrow is Palm Sunday. This is the day Jesus enters Jerusalem, and palms were laid ahead of him. Tomorrow in church children will come in at the beginning of service waving palm fronds while the choir sings hosannas. This marks the beginning of a week that starts in triumph, enters darkness and death, and ends with the resurrection.   

Monday Jesus goes to the temple and creates a big scene.

Tuesday Jesus goes back to the temple and the Jewish leaders are really unhappy with him. They have a big debate and after being exposed as heartless hypocrites, they move from unhappy to really ticked off.

Wednesday Judas sets off his conspiracy to betray Jesus.

Thursday is known as ‘Maundy Thursday’. Jesus and the Disciples meet in an upper room for the Last Supper. Jesus is betrayed, captured and imprisoned. It’s the beginning of two dark days. Our church has a candle lit service in observance of this dark dark day, and communion is served in remembrance of the last supper and Him.

Friday is ‘Good Friday’. Jesus is taken before Pilate, condemned, tortured and crucified on the tree. That evening he’s put in the tomb.

Saturday Jesus lies in the tomb; it’s the Jewish Sabbath and all who knew Jesus are in deep sorrow and morning.

Sunday Christ is resurrected!

Anti Christian Bigotry Seeps Into the Heartland

Even though a review of history shows beyond a doubt that this country, based on Judaic-Christian principles, is the most successful in terms of the material wealth, liberty, security, safety, and spiritual health than any other nation ever, and that secularist, socialist countries have a 100% failure rate, there are those in this country that still want to abolish all religion and religious principles.

The purpose is to replace religion as traditionally experienced, with the State. The State must do this, because it needs to create a vacuum so it can insert itself more effectively into the lives of citizens. They must change morality coming from God to morality coming from the State. They use "separation of Church and State" as the foundation of their argument. I don't see where non-Christian citizens are forced by Christians or government to observe Good Friday, or Christmas, or Easter. This is a Judaic-Christian, religious society, and these holidays are a reminder of that. Getting rid of them helps sever that and complete the imposition of a Secularist government. One has to obey the State under penalty and prosecution. God gives people a choice whether to obey or not. I prefer choice.

In the city of Davenport, Iowa, their Civil Rights Commission made a motion to change the name of "Good Friday" to "Spring Holiday". This was, of course, to impose State Morality on citizens in the name of "diversity". Good Friday is extremely important for Christians, at the core of our beliefs. The State's attempt to deny it creates diversity? When the Chair of the Commission was asked why he didn't abolish Christmas, his lame response was that several other 'diverse' groups celebrate Christmas. What? He couldn't name one, since that's a holiday, Holy Day, for Christians.

Something Statists don't like is not getting their own way, it's all about them. They use "civil rights" now to impose their agenda of obedience to the State. The founders and people of that time all recognized Good Friday, and changing that tradition to what anti Christian Secularists want, and excluding it, shows just how intolerant and self centered the Left is.

That this happened in the Midwest is astonishing. I would expect it in New York or California. Fortunately this decision was rejected by the citizens, but the secular Statists will be back.

Were You There? (vid)

Homily for Good Friday

"The simple fact is: this can’t be a day like any other. Scripture tells us that on the day Christ died, the world – literally – cracked open. The earth quaked. To this day, we cannot help but remember what was done for us. As the old spiritual tells us, it causes us to tremble.

But in the midst of all this, we do something remarkable.

We venerate the cross with a kiss.

I’m sure some outside our faith find it strange that we pay tribute to an instrument of death. But they don’t see the cross the way we do. Maybe they should.

Maybe they should try to see that the cross was not an end, but a means to an end – the method God chose to remake the world. Maybe they should strive to see in the cross the beginning of our salvation. This is the wood of the cross, on which hung the savior of the world.

When the priest prays the Eucharistic Prayer for Reconciliation, which we hear so often during Lent, he invokes the cross powerfully, and poignantly. As the prayer puts it, Jesus “stretched out his arms between heaven and earth in the everlasting sign of Your covenant.”

We are reminded today that it is a covenant that was sealed with nails, and splinters, and blood.

In the reading today from Isaiah, the prophet tells us about the suffering servant – foreshadowing Christ. Isaiah tells us: “He grew up like a sapling before him, like a shoot from the parched earth…it was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that he endured.”

In Christ’s cross, the wood we venerate and touch, we see part of the shoot from the parched earth. Nailed to this cross, He became one with it – and we are able to see this wood for what it truly is: a tree, like the one that prisoner saw, that holds out hope.

From within the four walls of our brokenness, behind the barbed wires of sin, we look out and look up -- and we see this “tree” that symbolizes our salvation. This is how we know we are saved. This is how we know how much God loves us.

This afternoon, the cross speaks to us. It speaks of the One who suffered and died upon it.

It speaks to us in consolation. And – yes -- in hope.

And quietly, but persistently, it offers us the promise of something better, beyond the prison wall.

'I am here. I am here. I am life. I am Eternal life.'"

This is the ending of the Good Friday Homily by Deacon Greg Kandra. Complete homily here.