Devotions from March 29 to April 4
The day that changed history is the one illuminated by the light of the Risen One. That light still illuminates our lives; let us allow it to shine through in our hearts and bear witness to it before the world.
“‘After the Sabbath’ (Mt 28:1), the women went to the tomb. Without knowing it, these women were preparing in the darkness of that Sabbath ‘the dawn of the first day of the week,’ the day that would change history. Jesus, like a seed in the earth, was about to make new life germinate in the world; and the women, through prayer and love, were helping hope to blossom. How many people, in the sad days we are living through, have done and are doing what those women did, sowing shoots of hope! With small gestures of care, affection, and prayer” (Pope Francis). Let us live these holy days by following Jesus, feeling ourselves to be a community gathered by his tenderness and affection.
MONDAY, MARCH 29
Holy Monday
Holy Week commemorates and celebrates the final days of Jesus’ earthly life, with his inner torments, physical suffering, trial, ascent to Calvary, crucifixion, death and burial, and finally his resurrection.
During this week, through the Gospel passages, the liturgy places before you all the people who surrounded Jesus in the final days of his earthly life: a gathering of humanity, conflicting emotions, and decisive choices.
Some will choose to follow Jesus all the way on his journey to Calvary, while others will definitively turn away from the light of the world.
To learn more:
• With Living Water
• On Your Word – (March-April 2021 Missal)
• Gospel and Acts of the Apostles
First day of the triduum of thanksgiving to Saint Joseph
To fittingly conclude the month of March dedicated to Saint Joseph, today we can begin a triduum of thanksgiving for all the graces we have received through his intercession. Nevertheless, let us not forget that we are also living through a special year dedicated to him, so let us continue to deepen our understanding of his extraordinary figure and never tire of invoking his powerful intercession.
To learn more:
• Prayers to Saint Joseph
TUESDAY, MARCH 30
Holy Tuesday
During his final days, many figures surround Jesus: the sisters of Bethany, Martha and Mary; the latter, as a sign of affection for Jesus, anoints the Lord with precious nard; Judas, an image of all those who, faced with the mystery of the passion of Christ Jesus, distance themselves.
But the Gospel will also bring you face to face with Peter, the first pontiff, whose impetuous words in fact conceal an as-yet immature faith that will lead the fisherman of Galilee to deny Jesus. Among all these figures, there is one mentioned very little, but whom we know was present beside her Son until the supreme moment: Mary.
Let her guide you into the very heart of the faith.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 31
Holy Wednesday
“Holy Wednesday is also called ‘Spy Wednesday,’ the day on which the Church emphasizes Judas’s betrayal. Judas sells the Teacher ... the devil entered Judas; it was the devil who led him to this point. And how did the story end? The devil is a bad payer: he is not a reliable payer. He promises you everything, shows you everything, and in the end leaves you alone in your despair to hang yourself.”
Judas’s heart, restless and tormented by greed and by his love for Jesus - a love that failed to become love - tormented by this fog, returns to the priests asking for forgiveness, asking for salvation. “What is that to us? That is your concern …” (cf. Mt 27:4): the devil speaks this way and leaves us in despair.
Let us think of the many institutionalized Judases in this world who exploit people. And let us also think of the little Judas that each of us has within us when choosing between loyalty and self-interest.
Each of us has the capacity to betray, to sell out, and to choose our own interests. Each of us can allow ourselves to be attracted by the love of money, possessions, or future well-being. “Judas, where are you?” But I ask the question of each of us: “You, Judas, the little Judas I have inside me: where are you?”” (Pope Francis).
THURSDAY, APRIL 1
Holy Thursday
Holy Thursday is reserved for two distinct liturgical celebrations. In the morning, during the Chrism Mass, the Bishop consecrates the holy oils: the Chrism, the Oil of Catechumens, and the Oil of the Sick, which will be used throughout the liturgical year to celebrate the sacraments.
On Thursday evening, however, the Mass of Coena Domini, the memorial of the Last Supper, is celebrated. At it, Jesus instituted the Eucharist and the Priesthood and entrusted the disciples with the commandment of love: “Love one another as I have loved you” (cf. Jn 13:34), after washing their feet. After this celebration, which begins the Easter Triduum, the faithful are invited to visit the Blessed Sacrament to comfort him in his agony in Gethsemane.
Pope Francis reminds us: “The reality we experience today, in this celebration: the Lord who wants to remain with us in the Eucharist. And we become ever the Lord’s tabernacles, carrying the Lord with us; to the point that he himself tells us that, if we do not eat his body and drink his blood, we will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. This is the mystery of the bread and wine, of the Lord with us, in us, within us.”
To learn more:
• Let us adore the Blessed Sacrament
• The Eucharistic Rosary
• I am the bread of life. The Forty Hours’ Devotion
FRIDAY, APRIL 2
Good Friday
“After Jesus had taken the vinegar, he said: ‘It is finished!’ And, bowing his head, he handed over his spirit” (Jn 19:30). On the day of the death of her Lord and Bridegroom, the Church does not celebrate the Eucharist. The liturgical action is dominated by the cross, leaving room only for silence and contemplation.
The gesture of adoring the cross becomes a meaningful response to the undeserved gift, an acknowledgment of Christ’s salvific kingship, and of the hope born from the cross. Eucharistic Communion, which concludes the liturgical celebration, makes us participants in Christ’s glorious death and its fruits: it is insertion into the Covenant sealed in the blood of the Lamb; it is the reception of the Spirit poured forth from Christ’s side.
Beginning of the novena to Divine Mercy
Today we begin the novena in preparation for the Feast of Divine Mercy. It consists of praying the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, to which extraordinary promises are attached: the promise addressed to all the faithful is this: “During this novena I will grant souls graces of every kind” (Diary, 796). We read further in the Diary: “I desire that during these nine days you lead souls to the fountain of My Mercy, so that they may draw strength, refreshment, and every grace they need for the difficulties of life, and especially at the hour of death. Each day you will bring a different group of souls to My Heart and immerse them in the sea of My Mercy. And I will bring all these souls into the house of My Father. You will do this in this life and in the life to come. And I will refuse nothing to any soul whom you bring to the fountain of My Mercy. Each day you will ask My Father for graces for these souls through My sorrowful Passion” (Diary, 1209).
To learn more:
• Chaplet and Novena to Divine Mercy
• Jesus, I trust in You. The devotion to Divine Mercy. The prayers of Saint Faustina
Beginning of the novena to Saint Gemma Galgani
“How could one not love Jesus with all one’s soul, with all one’s heart? How could one not desire to be wholly absorbed in Him and consumed in the flames of His holy love?” Thus wrote Saint Gemma Galgani, whose novena we begin today.
The singular figure of Gemma Galgani aroused keen interest immediately after her death, which occurred in Lucca on April 11, 1903 (it was Holy Saturday).
The originality of her spiritual life and the singular mystical gifts with which God graced her still interest many people today, especially those who are more sensitive to the life of the Spirit and to the wonders He works in His saints.
The personality of this Tuscan stigmatized mystic, as it emerges from her writings, has not yet been studied extensively; she who knew how to bend her pen to unusual boldness of thought and style, even though she often wrote, as she said, “in a rush” and without any regret or correction, using the Lucca dialect. Indeed, only those who read them, or rather, only those who return to them not once but several times in succession, will be able to appreciate the boldness of her style, always spare and vigorous, following in the footsteps of the other great mystic from her region, Catherine of Siena. A style redolent of heavenly experiences. Let us explore this extraordinary figure and confidently invoke her intercession.
To learn more:
• Saint Gemma Galgani. I Speak to You of Me. Autobiography, diary, letters
SATURDAY 3 APRIL
Holy Saturday
On Holy Saturday, silence, recollection, and meditation on Jesus in the tomb predominate. The Church remains at the Lord’s tomb, meditating on his passion and death. It is the day when the Church unites herself with Our Lady, awaiting the glorious dawn of the resurrection. On this day we persevere in prayer like Mary and together with Mary, sharing the same sentiments of trust in God. This Saturday of silence leads into the Easter Vigil, rightly called «the mother of all vigils» (Saint Augustine), which introduces the Sunday of the Lord’s Easter. «This is the night when Christ, breaking the bonds of death, rises victorious from the tomb» (from the Exsultet).
Beginning of the novena to the Virgin of Revelation
«I am she who is in the divine Trinity. I am the Virgin of Revelation. You persecute me; enough now!» These are the words the Virgin addressed to Bruno Cornacchiola. She also told him: «Enter the holy fold, the heavenly court on earth… With this land of sin I will perform powerful miracles for the conversion of unbelievers. I am the magnet of the Trinity of Love». The Blessed Virgin, at Tre Fontane, continues to call even today. Her invitation is to set out on a journey of prayer in order to find Jesus.
To learn more:
• Novena to the Virgin of Revelation
• Pray, pray, pray
• Revelation of the Virgin at Tre Fontane
SUNDAY 4 APRIL
Easter Sunday
«I have risen, I am always with you» (cf. Ps 139:18). The Easter proclamation resounds today in the Church: Christ is risen, he lives beyond death, he is the Lord of the living and the dead. That day changed history. Easter is therefore the proclamation of the fact of the resurrection, of victory over death, of life that will not be destroyed. The apostles bore witness to it, but the proclamation that Christ is alive must continually resound.
The Church, born from Christ’s Easter, safeguards this proclamation and transmits it in various ways to every generation: in the sacraments, it makes it present and contemporary to every community gathered in the name of the Lord; through its life of communion and service, it strives to bear witness to it before the world. Let us too feel called to bear witness to this proclamation.
To learn more:
• Gospel and Acts of the Apostles
• The Holy Bible. The Way of Peace
• The New Testament
Pope Francis reminds us: «Christ is risen! And we have the possibility of opening ourselves and receiving his gift of hope. Let us open ourselves to hope and set out on our journey; may the memory of his deeds and words be a dazzling light that guides our steps in trust toward that Easter which will have no end».
Happy Easter and a blessed journey!
