Holy Week

The last week opens with the royal entry into Jerusalem and ends at the tomb. In a few days is fulfilled all that the whole life of Christ had been moving toward: his Passion and his death for the salvation of the world. The first days are spent in the Temple, in teaching and in controversies that harden the opposition; then comes the Triduum, the Supper where he gives himself as food, the agony of Gethsemane, the two trials, the Cross, and the silence of the tomb. This is the hour for which he had come.

The Entry into Jerusalem

Six days before Passover, Jesus enters Jerusalem riding on a colt, like the humble and peaceful king the prophet had announced (Zechariah 9:9). The crowd spreads its cloaks and branches on the road and acclaims him: “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” Matthew 21:9. The Messiah receives the royal homage, not on a war chariot, but on the mount of peace. This acclamation, however, awaits an earthly king and does not recognize who he is; in a few days, the same voices will demand his death. This is why, at the sight of the city, Jesus weeps over it: it did not know how to recognize the time when God was visiting it, and he announces its ruin.

The Fig Tree and the Temple

Jesus spends these days in Jerusalem and withdraws each evening to Bethany. One morning, returning toward the city, he is hungry and approaches a fig tree covered with leaves but bearing no fruit; he curses it, and the tree withers. The sign aims at a religion that is all appearance, abundant in leaves and barren of fruit: such is the city that rejects him. Entering the Temple, he drives out the sellers and the money changers and reproaches them for profaning the place: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations; but you have made it a den of thieves.” Mark 11:17. The Temple, made for prayer and for God's meeting with all peoples, had been turned into a place of trade; Jesus restores it to its calling, and his gesture announces judgment upon a worship emptied of its heart.

The Parable of the Tenants

To the leaders who contest his authority, Jesus replies with a parable. A master plants a vineyard and entrusts it to tenants; at harvest time, he sends his servants to collect the fruit, but they are beaten and killed; at last he sends his son, and the tenants throw him out of the vineyard and put him to death to seize the inheritance. The vineyard is Israel, the servants are the prophets, and the son is himself, whom they are about to kill. He adds a word about the rejected stone: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” Matthew 21:42. Rejected by the leaders, he will be the foundation of the new edifice (Psalm 118:22). The leaders understand that he is speaking of them and seek to arrest him.

The Traps in the Temple

Traps are then set to catch him in fault. He is asked whether it is lawful to pay the tax to Caesar, the hated occupier: to answer yes turns him against the people, to answer no denounces him to Rome as a rebel. He has the tax coin shown and asks whose image and inscription it bears: Caesar's. “Render to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's.” Mark 12:17. The coin bears the image of Caesar and returns to him; but man bears the image of God (Genesis 1:27), and it is to God that he owes himself entirely. To the one who asks him the greatest commandment, he answers with two that are but one: to love God with all one's heart, and one's neighbor as oneself; the whole Law hangs on this love. To the Sadducees who deny the resurrection, he declares that God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Then he denounces the hypocrisy of the leaders, who lay on others burdens they do not carry, and tend the outside while neglecting the heart.

The Widow's Mite

Seated before the Temple treasury, Jesus watches the crowd deposit its offerings. The rich give much from their surplus; a poor widow puts in two small coins, all she has. He calls his disciples and declares to them that she has given more than all the others: “They put in from their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, put in all she had to live on.” Mark 12:44. Before God, the gift is worth not by its greatness, but by the love and the sacrifice of the one who gives: “If you have little, do not be afraid to give alms according to that little.” Tobit 4:8.

The Discourse on the End

As he leaves the Temple, while his disciples admire its stones, Jesus announces that not one stone will be left upon another. On the Mount of Olives they question him: when will this be, and what will be the sign of his coming and of the end of the world? His answer concerns two distinct events, which it interweaves: the imminent ruin of Jerusalem, whose Temple will be thrown down within this generation, and his return at the end of the world, beyond the ages. He warns first against illusion: false messiahs will come, there will be wars, famines, earthquakes, and his own will be persecuted; all this is only the beginning of the birth pangs, and the Gospel must first be proclaimed to all the nations. Only at the end will the sign of the Son of Man appear: he will come on the clouds, with power and glory, and will gather his elect from the four winds. No one knows the day, neither the angels, nor the Son, but the Father alone: as God, the Son knows it, but according to his human nature he has not received it to make it known. He adds: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” Matthew 24:35. And so he calls them to watch: “Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” Matthew 25:13.

He ends with the last judgment: the Son of Man, on his throne of glory, separates men as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He sets apart those who served him without knowing it, in the hungry, the stranger, the prisoner: “What you did to one of these least of my brothers, you did to me.” Matthew 25:40. The former enter into eternal life, the latter into eternal punishment, according to the love they showed or refused.

The Betrayal of Judas

The leaders seek to put him to death without stirring up the people. One of the Twelve, Judas, comes to them and offers to hand him over; they agree on a price, thirty pieces of silver, fulfilling the prophecy of Zechariah (Zechariah 11:12-13). From then on he watches for the favorable moment. The one who shared his table and his intimacy secretly prepares to sell him.

The Last Supper

When evening comes, Jesus eats the Passover with the Twelve, and brings this Passover to its fulfilment: the paschal lamb slain for the deliverance of Israel gives way to the Lamb of God. He rises, girds himself with a towel and washes his disciples’ feet, the office of a slave, then gives them its meaning: “If I, the Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” John 13:14. He leaves them his commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you.” John 13:34. Then, taking the bread, he blesses it, breaks it and gives it: “This is my body, given for you.” Luke 22:19; and likewise the cup: “This is my blood, the blood of the covenant, poured out for the multitude.” Mark 14:24. Under the bread and the wine he gives himself as food and seals in his blood the new covenant foretold by Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:31). By the words “Do this in memory of me” Luke 22:19, he entrusts to his own the charge of doing again what he has just accomplished, instituting the memorial that makes his one sacrifice present. He announces that one of them will betray him; Judas goes out into the night. And he foretells to Peter, who swears never to abandon him, that before the cock crows he will have denied him three times.

The Farewell Discourse

After Judas has gone out, Jesus speaks at length to his own, as a testament. He consoles them for his departure: he goes to prepare a place for them in his Father’s house, and he himself is the road to reach it, “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6. He promises not to leave them orphans: he will send them, from the Father, the Paraclete, the Greek word rendered “advocate” and “consoler,” paraklētos (παράκλητος), the Spirit of truth who will dwell in them and lead them into all truth. He calls himself the true vine of which they are the branches: “Abide in me, and I in you; without me you can do nothing.” John 15:4-5, and he shows how far the love he commands them goes: “No one has greater love than to lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13. He warns them at last that the world will hate them as it hated him, but that their sorrow will turn into joy, and that whatever they ask the Father in his name will be given to them.

The Priestly Prayer

At the close of this discourse, Jesus lifts his eyes to heaven and prays: this is the prayer called priestly, for in it he offers himself for his own, as high priest. He asks first for his own glorification, the glory he had with the Father before the world was, so that through him the Father may be glorified. He prays for his disciples, that the Father keep them from evil and sanctify them: “Consecrate them in the truth; your word is truth.” John 17:17. He prays at last for all who will believe through their word, asking that they be one: “That all may be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, so that the world may believe that you sent me.” John 17:21. The unity of his own, founded on that of the Father and the Son, becomes the sign by which the world will recognise the one God sent.

Gethsemane

Out in the garden of Gethsemane, at the foot of the Mount of Olives, Jesus takes with him Peter, James and John, the same who had seen him transfigured, and anguish seizes him: “My soul is sorrowful, even to death.” Mark 14:34. He withdraws, falls on his face and prays: “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not my will, but yours.” Matthew 26:39. The cup is that of the Passion he is to drink, the chalice of suffering and death. True man, he dreads death as every man dreads it, and nothing of his divinity spares him this trial. In him are two wills, one divine, one human; his human will recoils before death, and freely he hands it over to the will of the Father. In this “not my will, but yours,” the obedience of the new Adam reverses the disobedience of the first: what Adam lost in a garden by preferring his own will to God’s, Christ restores in a garden by surrendering his. An angel from heaven comes to strengthen him, and his sweat becomes like drops of blood falling to the ground (Luke 22:43-44). Three times he returns to his disciples and finds them asleep: “Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation: the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Matthew 26:41. Judas arrives with an armed band and marks him out with a kiss; Jesus says to him: “Judas, do you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?” Luke 22:48. Peter draws his sword and cuts off the ear of a servant; Jesus heals it and orders him to sheathe it, for he could ask the Father for legions of angels; he chooses to fulfil the Scriptures: “Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?” John 18:11. All the disciples then abandon him and flee.

The Jewish Trial

He is led to the high priest Caiaphas, where the leaders assemble. Witnesses contradict one another. The high priest finally adjures him: “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?” Mark 14:61. Jesus answers: “I am; and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Almighty and coming on the clouds of heaven.” Mark 14:62. He takes up the figure announced by Daniel, the Son of Man who comes on the clouds to receive dominion over all the nations (Daniel 7:13-14). To his judges, Jesus announces that they will see him return in this glory, and that they in turn will appear before him.

Still more, in saying he is seated at the right hand of the Almighty, Jesus claims his place in the very sanctuary of God. The high priest who questions him enters the Holy of Holies only once a year, and at the peril of his life (Leviticus 16); yet here is a man of flesh who says he is established permanently beside God, where none has access. He tears his garments and cries blasphemy; all judge him deserving of death. He is struck and covered with spittle. Outside, Peter, pressed with questions, swears three times that he does not know this man; the cock crows, the Lord turns and looks at him, and Peter goes out to weep bitterly.

The Trial before Pilate

In the morning, the leaders hand Jesus over to the Roman governor Pilate, the only one able to pronounce death. To the question of kingship, Jesus answers: “My kingdom is not of this world.” John 18:36, and Pilate, troubled, asks: “What is truth?” John 18:38. He finds in him no ground for condemnation. Learning that Jesus is a Galilean, he sends him to Herod, who reigned over Galilee and was then in Jerusalem. Herod, curious to see him work some miracle, presses him with questions, but Jesus answers nothing; piqued, he turns him to derision with his soldiers, clothes him in a splendid robe, and sends him back to Pilate. The latter tries again to release him, proposing to pardon either Jesus or the brigand Barabbas; the crowd, stirred up by the leaders, demands Barabbas. Pilate then has him scourged. The soldiers weave a crown of thorns and press it onto his head: the thorn was born of the earth cursed after the fault of Adam (Genesis 3:18), and the new Adam bears it on his brow, taking upon himself the curse of sin. They clothe him in a purple cloak, hand him a reed as a scepter, then mock him by bowing down: “Hail, king of the Jews!”, and strike him. Pilate shows him to the crowd, crowned with thorns: “Behold the man.” John 19:5, hoping to appease it; it shouts for him to be crucified and declares: “We have no king but Caesar.” John 19:15. Pilate washes his hands of the blood of this innocent man and hands him over to be crucified.

The Death of Judas

Seeing Jesus condemned, Judas is seized with remorse. He brings the thirty pieces back to the leaders: “I have sinned in handing over innocent blood.” Matthew 27:4. They rebuff him: that is his concern, not theirs. He throws the silver into the Temple, withdraws, and hangs himself. With this sum, the leaders buy a potter's field for the burial of strangers, which since then is called the Field of Blood.

The Crucifixion

He is led outside the walls of the city, carrying his cross; as he gives way, a passer-by, Simon of Cyrene, is compelled to carry it behind him. To the women who lament over him, he says to weep rather for themselves and for their children: “If they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” Luke 23:31, foretelling the disaster that will fall on Jerusalem. At the place called Golgotha, “the place of the Skull,” he is crucified between two criminals: thus is fulfilled what Isaiah had said of the Servant, “he was counted among the criminals.” Isaiah 53:12. The soldiers divide his garments and cast lots for his tunic, unknowingly faithful to the psalm of the suffering just one (Psalm 22:19). Above his head, an inscription carries the charge against him, in Hebrew, Latin and Greek, so that all may read it: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” John 19:19. The rulers, the soldiers and the passers-by mock him: “He saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Christ, the chosen one of God.” Luke 23:35. They speak more truly than they know: he does not come down from the cross precisely because he saves others, and it is by not sparing his life that he gives it. He prays for his executioners: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Luke 23:34. One of those crucified insults him; the other acknowledges his guilt and implores him, and Jesus promises him: “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Luke 23:43. Seeing his mother and the disciple he loved, he gives them to each other: “Woman, behold your son,” “Behold your mother.” John 19:26-27. This disciple stands for all believers: in entrusting him to Mary, Christ gives his mother as mother to the whole Church.

The Death of Christ

From noon to three o'clock, darkness covers the whole earth. He who dies on the Cross is the light of the world (John 8:12), and creation darkens with him: a sign of judgment and of the hour when the power of darkness seems to prevail, as the prophet had announced a day when the sun would set at noon (Amos 8:9). Jesus then utters a loud cry, praying the opening of Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Matthew 27:46. This psalm of the suffering just one ends in deliverance and praise: in making it his own, Jesus bears to the very end the distress of sinners, without his union with the Father ever being broken. He says: “I thirst” John 19:28; to the thirst of his exhausted body, they respond with vinegar, fulfilling the Scripture (Psalm 69:21). He then declares his work finished: “It is accomplished.” John 19:30; the salvation for which he had come is henceforth won. He freely commits his life to the Father: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” Luke 23:46. At that instant, the veil of the Temple is torn in two from top to bottom. This veil closed off the Holy of Holies, where the presence of God was manifested; torn from above, it signifies that the death of Christ opens to all the access to God, henceforth without barrier. The centurion who guarded him cries out: “Truly, this man was the Son of God.” Mark 15:39. A soldier pierces his side with a thrust of the lance, and at once there flows out blood and water, in which the Church recognizes the source of her sacraments, the water of baptism and the blood of the Eucharist, sprung from his opened side.

The Burial

In the evening, a member of the council, Joseph of Arimathea, asks Pilate for the body of Jesus. With Nicodemus, who brings a great quantity of myrrh and aloes, he wraps it in a shroud and lays it in a new tomb, cut in the rock, where no one had yet been placed. A great stone is rolled to the entrance. The women who had come from Galilee watch where he is laid. The next day, the leaders obtain from Pilate that the tomb be sealed and guarded. The great rest of the Sabbath spreads over the earth, and all falls silent, in the awaiting of the third day.