HOLY WEEK

Prayer for the Season: “In this week of all weeks let us walk slowly, mindfully,

through death and darkness toward the dawn that changes everything."

Practices for the Season: 

Daily readings with tactile prayer stations

Holy Wednesday silence and contemplation

Maundy Thursday family meal with foot-washing

Good Friday prayer vigil mixing traditional and spontaneous prayer

Holy Saturday preparation and expectation practices

Poetry for the Season:

Palm Sunday (by Capuchin Friar David Hirt)

The taste of hosannas is still on my lips,

the smell of the palms as they patter against

the cloudless blue sky of Jerusalem’s day

when David’s own scion comes riding a colt

and prophesy seems to arrive as we hoped

while children, the children, all sing him their psalms

and stones lying silent could echo their songs,

“Hosanna! Hosanna to David’s own son!”

when everything’s changed. The Messiah we have,

he isn’t the one that we want; not the king

who’ll ravage our foes and will raise up the House

of God: the grey temple we built with our hands.

A tremor now passes throughout the crowd come

to celebrate Passover; start the great feast

of Memory held in the fullness of time

and lived in again, in eternity Lord,

and “Crucify! Crucify,” echoes on still.

It bounces off stones and it shivers my soul.