Holy Week is an incredibly special time leading up to Easter Sunday in celebration of Christ’s resurrection from the dead. But what is it really about?

While Christians know the textbook answer, we don’t always fully understand it with our hearts. And to understand it more fully, this time should be spent seeking a deeper relationship with Jesus. It’s a phrase – a relationship with Jesus – that sounds so cliché, but to truly know Him, to truly invite Him into your life isn’t always as easy as most would have you think.

The following selections are five recommendations for going deeper into that great mystery both from a biblical and a scientific viewpoint. All will help you have a deeper understanding of what Christianity is really about, and will help you develop a greater appreciation of Christ's Passion.

The Rescue Project

"What if there’s another story?" asks Fr. John Riccardo, " The Rescue Project is proposing one that is known as the Gospel."

This series shares the gospel message in a way that was taught by the early Church, a way that should strike your heart in a meaningful way. In his book Rescued: The Unexpected and Extraordinary News of the Gospel, Fr. John Riccardo explains,

Another word you might have heard to refer to the gospel is kerygma. Kerygma is simply a Greek word that means ‘proclamation,’ as in ‘the proclamation of the gospel. . . . I rephrase the kerygma into four questions:

•  Why is there something rather than nothing?
•  Why is everything so obviously messed up?

•  What, if anything, has God done about it?

•  If God has done something, how should I respond?

The following is the trailer for The Rescue Project:

You can view the full series here: https://watch.actsxxix.org/therescueproject

New Evidence for the Shroud of Turin w/ Fr. Andrew Dalton (Pints With Aquinas)

The amount of energy you would need to recreate a similar image would be 34 thousand billion watts. - Fr. Andrew Dalton, LC, expert on the Shroud of Turin

Fr. Andrew Dalton not only explains the science and controversy surrounding the Shroud of Turin, but the evidence that it is Christ’s shroud and what it tells us about the crucifixion.

While this may not seem like a conversation that would spark a spiritual experience, I can assure you this is well worth watching during Holy Week as you will learn more about what Jesus endured than what you’ve ever heard. This discussion provides greater knowledge of the crucifixion from a scientific standpoint that will only deepen your belief.

Holy Thursday

Dr. Scott Hahn | Finishing Strong: Partakers of the 4th Cup | Adult Defending the Faith Conference (Steubenville Conferences)

“Did you ever wonder what He was referring to when He said, ‘It is finished?’” the pastor asked in his homily, but didn’t know the answer.

Scott Hahn responded, “I found [that question] deeply troubling. . . . WHAT was finished?!”

Hahn answers this question and explores the fourth cup that was missing from the Last Supper, which was a Passover Seder meal that should include four cups of wine.

Good Friday

The Passion of the Christ

This famous movie by Mel Gibson is quite possibly the most painful crucifixion account to watch. The Passion of the Christ converted many, including some of those working on the set. And, yet, it’s possible that this still doesn’t capture the suffering Christ truly endured during his Passion.

If you can, this is a movie worth watching on Good Friday with a box of Kleenex or two.

Trailer:

Easter

The Paschal Sermon of St. John Chrysostom (Pints With Aquinas)

Saint John Chrysostom is one of the Church Fathers and bishop of Constantinople who is known for his gift of preaching and public speaking. Matt Fradd wonderfully reads Chrysostom’s masterful Paschal Sermon about Christ’s victory over death.

This short sermon is the perfect way to kick off Easter with its message of victory!

When I wrote my article on the Eucharist, I thought about how long I had been away from the Church. While I went on retreat every year and confessed that I wasn't going, I realized that I had suddenly become an Easter-Christmas Catholic. It wasn’t that I had an issue with the Church or that I didn't want to be there, but I felt completely uninspired and, most important, a very heavy weight on my shoulders.

I took a job in 2011 in an area where I wasn't happy, felt very alone, and was clearly an outsider. The one space where I was welcomed by folks whenever I went in was a brewery near my office, so I spent a lot of time drinking and talking with people. Two years after, I moved “across town” to be in a nicer area that wasn't quite the concrete jungle that I left, but it was now a total of two hours of daily commuting, which eventually turned into three hours with increased school traffic and construction that magically popped up on different roads throughout the week, so there was no avoiding it.

During those years I had fallen into two rather un-Christianlike relationships, one of which completely destroyed my heart. It took me three months to prepare myself to leave him because I wanted to mean it when I walked away. It took upwards of a year for my heart to heal enough to be able to act normal and not be drowned in my sense of loss.

I finished my undergrad degree and completed my MBA during this time, and my method of coping, especially during rush hour, was to stop at a restaurant along the way and eat and drink for a couple of hours. Yes, it was alcohol, and by the time I finally quit my job in 2017, I was walking the fine line between alcohol abuse and alcoholism.

My last day of work was the Friday before Labor Day, and I immediately headed out for an annual camping trip with old friends from my East Lansing days. I felt very strange as I knew I was free and didn’t have to return to work, but of course my body and my brain didn't realize that new freedom and I still felt the weight. I went home and, for the most part, slept until January.

My drinking also suddenly ended with the exception of one bottle of wine per month. I suddenly didn't need alcohol and I simply wanted to sleep. It's a miracle I even obtained clients and completed work for my business that I started building while I was in grad school.

In January, I was working on prospecting and marketing, and suddenly I stopped, looked up, and realized that my spark had returned. I felt like myself again! I didn't need to sleep all day and I had a healthy relationship with alcohol. I felt like I was alive again, only that's debatable because when you're dead in this life, you don't actually recognize it.

I walked away from both a job and from dating – both things that were destroying me and causing me great pain. Looking back, while I still wasn’t on the right path, I began to clean the worst things out of my life, and started moving toward a place where I could heal. I continued my dark slumber doing what I thought I had to, trying to avoid further pain, but finding more. Finally, in 2021, I realized I couldn't handle this world anymore and I cried out to God to save me.

God very clearly paved the way over the course of the next eight months for me to finally return to the Church. That fall, I removed both spiritual and physical garbage from my life, and I returned to Mass in 2022. My life changed. A huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders and the fear and pain were gone. That is when I came back to life.

Do We See Our Own Suffering?

In recent months, I've read about some of the great Catholic saints and the correlation between mysticism and suffering. While pondering suffering in my life, I concluded that I had gotten off easy because I never really experienced suffering! Sure, I am getting older and my body hurts every day, but it doesn't really hurt in a way that hinders me or even really bothers me.

This is in contrast to the pain I suffered as a child. If I get a paper cut, it is usually only an annoyance if it bleeds. The bleeding might keep me from doing something for a couple of minutes while I apply pressure. But when I was four, if I got a paper cut, it was the end of the world and my mother had to deal with my torment, which I’m sure she shared with me for a different reason!

It’s fascinating how our tolerance to pain increases as we age. I’m inclined to conclude that our desensitization to pain throughout life is possibly due to God’s great mercy as we age and our bodies near the inevitable experience of death.

But then my thoughts went from physical pain to emotional pain. That's when I really started to ponder those 10 years of my life. I realized that I experienced an incredibly dark period that was cursed with sadness and anxiety and despair. The emotional pain manifested physically, in addition to the health issues I was having.

I realized that a lot of the suffering I endured was emotional, and I brought it upon myself. Had I not turned away from God, I likely would haven endured hardship as that is a part of life, but it would not have taken such a toll on me, and it wouldn’t have been the emotional pain I experienced.

In Matthew 22:36-38, a Pharisee asked Jesus, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.”

I failed to love God with all my heart, and that great sin spiraled into a collection of sins that led to my death.

How Sin Hurts

Last year, someone asked me to define sin. What is sin? This is something I often ponder because you can very easily look for the definition in numerous articles and in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, but I’m never truly satisfied with the answer. The Bible sets sin in a perspective of relationship. With that in mind, what does sin really do?

Sin sets itself against God’s love for us and turns our hearts away from it. (CCC 1850)

One example I’ve heard to help explain the impact of sin is to think of it in terms of cheating on your spouse. The damage of cheating hurts the relationship and shuts down communication. In order to repair the marriage, forgiveness and the honest intent to turn away from cheating is required for both to come together to heal the marriage.

Fr. Thomas Dubay, S.M., wrote The Fire Within based on his extensive experience as a spiritual director. The book taps into the writings of Sts. Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross as well as the Gospel as the foundation for personal prayer with the intent of communing with Christ. Dubay writes, “St. Teresa’s starting point is the absolutely basic condition for a serious prayer life: an earnest, continuing effort to rid oneself of sins, imperfections, and attachments. . . . Christic communion cannot be produced by techniques, because it is above all a love matter before it is anything else – and precisely because interpersonal intimacy is its heart, it is suffocated, even killed, by selfishness in any form.”

While I don't have as full of an understanding of sin as I would like, what I do know is that sin isn't simply a checklist of bad things you do. Sin is a block between you and God. It prevents you from entering into relationship with Him more fully precisely because you reject Him when you sin.

As I started traveling down this path of prayer, my understanding of sin evolved. Even small venial sins that are cleansed away from me each morning when I receive the Eucharist are now problematic for me, because I see them as slowing my ability to truly experience God in my daily prayer. Experiencing God, hearing God, having Him in my daily life is far better than any sin of pleasure.

The Difference between Life and Death

When the thought of those 10 years of my death suddenly came to the forefront of my mind, it was a bit of a surprise when I subsequently heard the following reading at Mass. Jeremiah had summed up both my years of death as well as my current state in life.

Jeremiah 17:5-10 (NAB)

 

Thus says the LORD:

Cursed is the man who trusts in human beings,

who seeks his strength in flesh,

whose heart turns away from the LORD.

He is like a barren bush in the desert

that enjoys no change of season,

But stands in a lava waste,

a salt and empty earth.

 

Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,

whose hope is the LORD.

He is like a tree planted beside the waters

that stretches out its roots to the stream:

It fears not the heat when it comes,

its leaves stay green;

In the year of drought it shows no distress,

but still bears fruit.

 

More tortuous than all else is the human heart,

beyond remedy; who can understand it?

I, the LORD, alone probe the mind

and test the heart,

To reward everyone according to his ways,

according to the merit of his deeds.

I read my Bible every morning before Mass, and on the morning of the Jeremiah reading, I read the first three chapters of John. While there was so much that I was excited about and underlined, the one thing that stuck out to me was, “What do you seek?”

Jesus asked, “What do you seek?” and I felt like that was very personal. I recalled the question several times throughout the Mass, and suddenly my mind went to the things that I saw while I was dating and in friendships that are now in the past.

If you look at my friendships, these are people who love me for who I am, and they allow me to love them as my friends. And while many of them aren’t even Christian, they aren’t threatened or offended by me being Catholic. These friendships are one of the things that I treasure most in this life. I didn’t always have this though. Many of my friendships throughout my life centered around how I made people feel and what I could do for them, but they rejected me for who I really was and what I believed.

When it came to dating, I wanted nothing more than to find someone who would love me for whom and what I am without requiring me to live up to ridiculous or weird standards that prevail in our culture. I also wanted to be able to love someone without them rejecting that love or feeling that it was too much. The irony is that I don't exactly wear my heart on my sleeve, and I struggle to open up to someone I can’t read, so there are some people who are difficult for me to talk to, romantic or not. I later realized that the men I was dating did not want a serious relationship, and those experiences combined with my observations of society led to me closing my heart to people.

As I walk with God, He probes my heart and moves into the dark wounded areas. Sometimes it hurts, but it always heals. I firmly believe that God loves me as I was at my worst, as I am now, and as I will be at my best. Even more, He allows me to love Him as much as I can, with as little as I have. It's not only enough, but never too much, and perfect.

“What do you seek?” He asked me. The complexities of relationships and feelings rapidly flashed through my mind, and part of me rejected those thoughts as none of those things seemed to be the answer. My heart finally rested on one thing: Heaven. And He gives me life as He draws me near.

***

My Struggle to Believe in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist: How It Is Transforming My Life - https://dibear.locals.com/post/5252947/my-struggle-to-believe-in-the-real-presence-of-jesus-christ-in-the-eucharist

Fire Within: St. Teresa of Avila, St John of the Cross, and the Gospel on Prayer by Thomas Dubay, S.M., Ignatius Press, 1989.

Fr. Donald Calloway who, as a teen, was a drug mule for the Yakuza “Japanese mafia,” explained his conversion experience to Matt Fradd on Pints with Aquinas when he encountered the Eucharist for the first time: “That dude went up to that table – the altar of course – bent over, [the Filipino women are] on their knees, he picks up the little white circle . . . and he said this, man, ‘Take this all of you and eat of it. This is my body.’ And he held it up like he was showcasing it. . . . Dude, I’m in the back and I’m thinking, ‘You’re a madman, bro!’ He just told us that that’s his body and we gotta eat it. . . . And it was like he stood there for a long time, as though somebody came in and pressed pause on the room, and then I heard a voice . . . and it wasn’t spoken to my ear. It was spoken to me,” he says as he points to his heart. “And that voice said to me: ‘Worship.’ I had what I could only call an infusion of knowledge. I knew what that man had in his hands was God. . . . I saw that man say to each one of those women, ‘The Body of Christ.’”

When I heard that story, I wanted what Fr. Calloway had. I wanted to be able to look at the Eucharist and know that that is God.

But that never happened.

I saw that interview before I came back to the Catholic Church after a 10-year hiatus. Since then, before every Mass, I tell God some version of the following: “When I look at the Eucharist, I want to believe with all my heart, with everything that I am, that that is you.” Sometimes, I request, “Jesus, I want to see you. I want to recognize you.” Sometimes, it’s a simple as, “Help me believe.”

But what does it mean to see? What is faith? If you don’t believe in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ, do you lack faith? Should you receive the Eucharist if you don’t believe? Do Mass-going Catholics really believe who the Eucharist is claimed to be? What does it mean to believe?

Joe Bukuras shared in The Catholic World Report in 2023 that, “The [Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA)] study said that 95% of weekly Mass attendees and 80% who attend at least once a month believe in the Real Presence.” This was in contrast to a 2019 Pew Research study that indicated that only one-third of US adult Catholics believed, but one has to ask whether all of these self-described Catholics were actually attending church. I even took a survey with my own parish to which I answered yes, I believe in the Real Presence, but what does that even mean? I could have answered no for an equal number of reasons.

The real question we need to ask is:  Do you believe in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist?

• Yes
• No
• It’s complicated.

I think if Mass-going Catholics were asked this question, there would be many more in the it’s complicated category with me.

When I ask God to help me to “believe with all my heart, with everything that I am,” do I really know what I’m asking for? Do I understand what that looks like, what it entails? I can tell you from experience that I am well aware that when I ask God for something, I have no idea what I’m really asking for and that He will do it His way and in His time.

To say that I lack faith would do a great disservice to the confusing and exciting experience I’ve been living these past two years. I think my faith is actually quite strong.

In 2021 as the COVID lockdowns and unemployment were coming to an end, I suddenly found myself fearful and losing hope with the direction this world was heading. It had finally sunk in that our global leaders managed to take the Eucharist away from Catholics worldwide. As a cradle Catholic who never really put much thought into the Eucharist, and hadn’t regularly attended church for 10 years, I suddenly felt a desperation for the freedom to choose to receive the Eucharist, and I pled, “God, I’m scared. I hate this world. Please save me.”

After eight months of praying, watching lots of YouTube videos, feeling a looming darkness, and hearing over and over again to go to Confession and come back to Mass (thank you, Fr. Mike Schmitz), I finally returned on Palm Sunday of 2022. I immediately fell in love with the Mass and Sunday became the high point of my week. I left every Sunday feeling completely calm and at peace with a cleared mind, which is not like me at all.

Something embarrassing also started happening. I began crying during Mass. I’m not much of a crier unless I’m enjoying wine and my friends make me laugh so hard it hurts. There is also the super rare betrayal or anger cry. Finally, The Wedding Singer cry is also a thing. But this cry doesn’t fall into any of those categories, so what was happening? I call it the Holy Spirit cry.

You cannot feel the love another person has for you, but only the love you have for them. But God can choose to allow you to feel His love, and I do believe that is what I experienced throughout 2022 and some of 2023, and recently it has returned at a new level that just wrecks me. For me, the Holy Spirit cry happens when I am suddenly overcome by a twinge to the heart that produces a rapid shock to the system to the point that I cannot contain it, and so I burst into tears. These are not tears of sadness, nor laughter, nor anything I had experienced in the first 44 years of my life. Rarely, tears of no known cause occur.

My parish holds a monthly Eucharistic event that I attend in addition to our Friday adoration. One day, I was kneeling at this event, eyes closed, just resting, and suddenly tears started streaming down my face. I wasn’t sad or upset. I didn’t have a thought that would trigger an emotional response. I was simply sitting in peace. At the onset of these tears, and in my confusion, I opened my eyes to see that the monstrance now contained the Eucharistic host that our priest had just placed there.

At a later time, I peacefully sat in adoration with a general feeling of contentment and suddenly realized that a stream of tears had taken over my right cheek. My immediate response in quiet prayer was, “Can we please not do this now? Please?” The tears immediately stopped. That’s the only time my tears have stopped on demand, and I stopped having those crying experiences for several months, which I thought was great, because I hate crying in front of people.

My parish recently gave out the book, Beautiful Eucharist, put out by Dynamic Catholic, which contains writings about conversion and the Eucharist by widely respected Catholic influencers like Fr. Mike Schmitz, Peter Kreeft, and Fulton Sheen. The chapters of this book are filled with wonderful and inspiring contributions, and I actually recommend reading it, but the author of the last chapter, Matt Warner, perfectly and unintentionally summed up the problem not only with the book, but with all of the Eucharistic inspirational events, podcasts, and books that I’ve seen thus far, including retreats, conferences, and articles intended to inspire belief in the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. According to Warner:

...no matter the soundness of the apologetics or truth-bombs dropped, the effectiveness of any message is always limited by a person’s capacity to receive it. . . . That capacity for a person to receive a message is determined by many things, such as their relationship with the person speaking, their perception of (in this case) the Church, their own immediate needs, experiences of suffering, and many other factors that are independent of the words we say or the finely-reasoned arguments we share. More than all that still, and perhaps the biggest factor influencing one’s capacity to receive a given message, is their worldview.

Mr. Warner failed to understand that his own worldview was preventing him from seeing the real cause of the problem of people’s failure to recognize the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist: grace.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 1996-1997) explains, “Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and eternal life. Grace is a participation in the life of God.” Anything gifted to us by God is grace, even faith (CCC 2003).

God gives out grace like Oprah gives out cars, but unless you are unwilling to unclench your fist and open your hand so He can drop the keys into your palm, you won’t be driving the gracemobile home. This is an important distinction. You are not in control. You cannot earn or take grace. You receive it, and this is observed in the posture one takes while receiving Holy Communion. One does not take the host or the wine; one receives. It is given to you.

Jesus tells us in Matthew 7:7-8, “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.”

Belief is given to us by the grace of God, and if you struggle with belief, you must ask for it.

A lot of us have expectations of what it looks like to believe, but this preconception stands in the way of knowing how much we actually do believe because we don’t see in ourselves what we would expect.

To me, belief in the Eucharist meant having that special experience of looking and knowing that it is Jesus, not just with my mind, but with everything that I am. It isn’t some superficial understanding of Catholic teaching that I seek, but to truly know Him.

It is as though my head and my heart are disconnected so that I cannot see Him. My heart sees something my eyes cannot, and it comprehends that which my mind cannot. While I continue to pray for the sight to see Him in the Eucharist, I’ve come to realize that while God may not give me that grace, He has been answering my prayer this whole time in a much deeper way.

Over the last few years, my prayer life has radically changed from one of a desire to know God to one of interacting with him daily, of being more sensitive to his call to conversation, of recognizing Him and receiving what He chooses to give me. While I hate saying this because it sounds so cliché, I think I finally know what it’s like to truly have a personal relationship with Jesus, and yet the present state of this relationship is only scratching the surface of what will be.

I debated sharing this next part because it is so deeply personal and feels so out of place in 21^st Century America, but I think it is the answer to all of my questions concerning belief in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. I feel like I’m falling in love, a feeling I’ve always hated because it has been plagued with constant distraction, uncertainty, and insecurity. But this time, there is no uncertainty and insecurity, but focus remains a challenge.

I’ve cleared my calendar for the next two months – only church and work remain – not because of burnout or some other need for rest, but because I have an incredible need to draw closer to God. I have no idea what these next two months will look like because I’m not in control. I am not making plans. I simply go to Mass every day and actively pray, which includes sitting in silence ready to receive.

And isn’t that the whole point of the Eucharist? It doesn’t matter that I don’t recognize Jesus when I look upon it. It doesn’t matter that I can’t see behind the veil. What does matter is that I am doing what Jesus commanded, as the Catholic Church provides, and as Christ has increasingly drawn me to so, that my life can be transformed into one of moving closer to Him.

You stir us so that praising you may bring us joy, because you have made us and have drawn us to yourself, and our heart is unquiet until it rests in you. . . . You are . . . intimately present. . . . Who will grant me to find peace in you? Who will grant me this grace, that you would come into my heart and inebriate it, enabling me to forget the evils that beset me and embrace you, my only good? What are you to me? Have mercy on me, so that I may tell. - St. Augustine, The Confessions, translated by Maria Boulding

***

Image: Adoration of the Blessed Sacraement of the Church of the Sacred Heart of Monaco by Willuconquer - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Eucharist#/media/File:Adoration_du_Saint_Sacrement_%C3%A0_l'Eglise_du_Sacr%C3%A9-Coeur_de_Monaco.jpg

Joe Bukuras, “New study shows that now almost two-thirds of US Catholics believe in Real Presence.” The Catholic World Report. - https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2023/09/29/new-study-shows-that-now-almost-two-thirds-of-us-catholics-believe-in-real-presence/

“An Interview with Fr. Donald Calloway.” Pints with Aquinas - https://www.youtube.com/live/Pr44q3zw4j8?si=vBu_7PqyGfkSW_1O&t=2137