These three days, from Holy Thursday evening until the Saturday evening Vigil of Easter, are at the heart of our life as Christians and therefore the core of our human existence.
An Invitation
I find it helpful to live these three days, the Triduum, as days of retreat.
You will probably be fully occupied with family and other commitments, but this is not a problem for God at all.
Try taking 10 minutes at the beginning and end of each day to sit in stillness and silence and relax. Breathe deeply. Know that every emotion and feeling you will have every and will ever experience is being experienced by Jesus in these days:
- the joy of gathering with close friends (Last Supper)
- the awareness that some are betraying and denying you and even the pain of being abandoned by friends (like Jesus denied and betrayed and abandoned.
- Others not being able to empathise with you (the three friends fell asleep when he needed them in the Garden of Gethsemane)
- A deep call from the heart to “let this cup pass from me” (as Jesus cries out to his Father from the cross), and even the feeling “my God, my God, why have you abandoned me” as Jesus expressed his feeling while knowing for a fact that his Father was leading him forward, through death, to the new life of resurrection.
In these three days Jesus is inviting us to see every suffering we experience in life as the doorway to more abundant life.
Take comfort in this reality, even if your feeling has not yet reached this confidence.
thank you Fr John