Young Roots
The ‘Holy’ in the “Holy Week”
By Johanne Margarette R. Macob
WHEN I started going to school, I also started going to churches. Our family heard mass regularly. And if the some things had not changed, we would already be planning which churches to visit this Lenten week by now (Holy Tuesday).
Yet, things change, beliefs included. The moment I started to value my education was also the very moment I began giving real significance to my faith in God, but only in a non-conventional way. While other members of our family still regularly listen to sermons in church, I have personally chosen to stay at home and visit my own church. I have since forgotten the prayers I was taught to memorize, and began praying my own prayers. I have built my own communication link with Him though I don’t regularly read the bible as well.
However, let me state clearly that I have my respect for all the people who do what I don’t do anymore. I have high regard for those who visit the church regularly, who pray the rosary, and who read the bible as much as those who are like me on the talk of faith in God.
Thus, this Holy Week, putting the holiness in the observance of such doesn’t necessarily mean going to our respective churches or undertaking physically-torturing sacrifices. Again, I have all the respect for those who do these things, but such shouldn’t be the sole indicator that one’s Holy Week is being made ‘holy.’
Visiting one church, 12 churches or none at all doesn’t add to our holiness. As CBCP president Archbishop Socrates Villegas told us in an interview, “Conscience is the only church we need to visit” and that the real meaning of Holy Week is holiness through love.
“Love alone can make us whole and love alone can make these days holy.” Holy Week is about offering others our love, our help, our forgiveness, our self. It’s being selfless.
Thus, making the Holy Week holy is, I believe, easy. As Father Soc also said, to go on with our family vacations or our planned Visita Iglesia, for what really matters is having the love for God intact that equates to having love for others.
Here is Father Soc’s views about fasting. It has been a practice not to eat meat during the Lenten season, but the sad thing about that, he said, is that not everyone gets the idea behind the tradition. It’s about giving the meat that we do not eat to those who can’t afford it. Giving.
Holy Week is not just about us and our sacrifices, it is about the things we do for others. Holiness is what we make it, in consonance with our conscience, regardless of traditions or of religions. And the true meaning of Holy Week, like that of Christmas, should be lived everyday.
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