We Enter Holy Week

We enter Holy Week. During this sacred time, we celebrate the kerygma of our faith: “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.”

On Good Friday, we commemorate the first aspect of the kerygma: Christ has died. As Pope St. Leo the Great teaches, “To pay the debt of our sinful state, a nature that was incapable of suffering was joined to one that could suffer.” The invisible Son of God became visible through the Incarnation in order to suffer and die for us.

The blood of Jesus is the price paid for our freedom – a ransom. He is the propitiation for our sins, meaning that Jesus absorbed the blow of God we deserved and turned away God’s wrath. Through his death, Christ accomplished reconciliation between humanity and God.

On Easter Sunday, we celebrate the second aspect of the kerygma: Christ is risen. As St. Paul writes, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.” In the Resurrection, Christ’s human soul, intellect, and will are transformed and glorified, just as his body is. He remains forever the God-man – perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity. In short, the Son of God took on our human nature in order to restore it.

Pope Francis paraphrases the kerygma in this way:

• God loves you: “At every moment, you are infinitely loved.”

• Christ, out of love, sacrificed himself completely to save you: he “continues to save and redeem us by the power of his total self-surrender. Look to his cross.”

• Christ is alive: “Alive, he can be present in your life at every moment.”

The mysteries of Holy Week impress upon our hearts that God loves us infinitely, that he saves us through the cross, and that he is alive and present in our lives.

Strengthened by the grace of the Holy Week mysteries, we look forward to the future with profound faith, a renewed hope for holiness, and a sanctified charity that loves both God and neighbor unconditionally.