Last May, I teamed up with our Family Life & Evangelization directors at our parish and we began a ministry that I had been cooking up for sometime. The ministry was called Liturgical Living at Home and it consisted of a monthly workshop for families where we learned about upcoming feast days and solemnities for the upcoming month. We provided the families with a Liturgical Living at Home toolkit full of fun and meaningful ideas for living out the liturgical year with their families. It was a very successful ministry and since we’ve now cycled through an entire year, the focus is shifting to Virtuous Living at Home and focusing on how to live a virtuous life. But, because I enjoyed Liturgical Living at Home so much and we saw great fruits from it, I want it to continue in some way, so I’m bringing it to Mom For All Seasons as a monthly series. One thing that I noticed when I was creating the workshop each month was the fact that there are a ton of super cute and fun ideas and projects out there for young children but not a lot available for older children and teens and that is an issue that I hope to be able to address and solve.
To kick it off, we are starting with Liturgical Living at Home: Holy Week and I’m going to give you an inside look at how we celebrate Holy Week in our home. If you want to see even more of what we are doing this year in real time, be sure you’re following me on Instagram.
In our home, we make Holy Week look completely different from any other week of the year. We try as much as possible to totally clear our calendar of anything besides family and Church events. For me this means very little {if any} work, and my husband is a full-time employee of our parish, so it’s actually a busy time for him, but he makes sure to not schedule in anything extra. Our oldest daughter {11th grade} goes to our local Catholic high school, so she does have school Monday-Wednesday, but she has asked her employer to not schedule her for any hours at all next week. Our youngest is homeschooled {10th grade}, so she will have very little school work scheduled for the beginning of the week and none scheduled for Wednesday-Sunday.
If you’re looking for some meaningful hands-on Holy Week assignments/projects for your children, I invite you to check out my Exploring Holy Week: Hands-On Journey to Easter for grades 4-8, or Exploring Easter: Hands-On Journey to the Heart of Easter for grades K-3. These studies are perfect for your homeschool lesson plans this week! No Easter bunnies included! Both studies are 50% off this week!
As we journey through Holy Week, from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, we experience every possible emotion. From joy to exasperation, from the deepest despair to longing and hope. If we do it right, on Easter Sunday we cannot possibly be the same person we were just one week prior on Palm Sunday. It just isn’t possible. As I have grown in my faith, and as my children have grown in years and also in faith, we encourage one another to truly put ourselves IN the Passion and Easter narratives that we read in the Bible and that we hear read at Mass.
Allow yourself to be there in Jerusalem welcoming Jesus in on Palm Sunday shouting Hosanna with the crowds. Feel the excitement.
On Holy Monday, allow yourself to sit at the feet of Jesus like Mary of Bethany, anointing his feet with oil. Smell the sweet smell. Feel the love that Mary is showing Jesus. Recognize the greed that Judas expresses in his questioning and examine areas in your life where you too hold back the best from Jesus.
On Holy Tuesday, allow yourself to sit with the disciples and Jesus when Jesus tells them that one of them will betray him. Allow yourself to feel the emotion and confusion that the disciples felt.
On Spy Wednesday, allow yourself to enter into the feelings of Judas. Meditate on the ways that you have also betrayed Jesus and “sold” him for lesser things.
On Holy Thursday, allow yourself to be there at the last supper. To feel all of the emotions associated with all that transpires as Jesus himself institutes the priesthood and the Eucharist….and then, follow Jesus as He goes to the Garden of Gethsemane and begins His passion. Standby and watch as Jesus is betrayed by his friend. Remember in your own life ways that friends have betrayed you or ways that you have betrayed others.
On Good Friday, follow Him each step of the way, the trial in front of Pilate to the scourging at the pillar, to carrying His cross up Calvary, to standing at the foot of the Cross with Mary, to consoling Mary as her Son breathes His last breath, to standing by as they remove Jesus from the cross, and place Him in his mother’s arms, to placing Him in the tomb and rolling the stone in front of it. Allow yourself to feel each emotion, to feel each pain, to hear each sound, and know that it was all for YOU.
On Holy Saturday, allow yourself to feel the ache, the fear, the questioning in the heart of each disciple. The darkness surrounds and the world is quietly holding its breath waiting for what comes next.
At Easter Vigil Saturday, as the lights come on and the darkness is vanished once and for all…feel that great joy. A joy like no other as you sing out, Alleluia! He is risen indeed. Easter has come, just as He promised it would. Embrace that Easter joy and carry it into our dark world.
Sweet friends, I promise you…if you allow yourself to enter in and experience this Holy Week like never before, you will be a new person come Easter morning. If you have older children, encourage them to walk this walk with Jesus as well.
Much of what I’ve shared to this point has been geared to your internal experience of Holy Week, but what about the external? How can we truly LIVE Holy Week in our homes?
Palm Sunday-
On Palm Sunday, we start the day by attending Mass. The liturgical color for Palm Sunday is red which is to commemorate Jesus’ suffering. I like to wear a red dress to Mass in honor of this day. When my daughters were younger, I would ensure they wore red as well. Dressing in the liturgical color for the day is a great visual reminder of the day in which we are celebrating. At Mass, we each receive blessed palm branches. One of my daughters loves to do what she refers to as “palm origami” and turns her branch into a cross. Here’s a great tutorial video on how to do this. Bring your palms home and place them in a prominent location. Many people like to place them behind their crucifixes…but since our crucifixes are all still covered with purple cloth until Good Friday, we put ours in the center of our dining room table. Whatever you do, just don’t throw them away! Because they are blessed, they are sacramentals and can only be disposed of by burning or burying them.
In Mass, we read the entire Passion of Christ. As the congregation cries out “crucify Him!”, the tone for Holy Week truly sets in.
Our Palm Sunday dinner follows our “red” theme and consists of homemade Red Beans & Rice with Palm Sunday Sundaes for dessert. This is a fun tradition we’ve had since our girls were little…and even though they’re 16 and 17 now, they still look forward to making ice cream sundaes on Palm Sundae.
Holy Monday & Holy Tuesday
These are spring cleaning days! I quickly finish up any loose ends with work that I have to tie up for the week and then I jump into spring cleaning my house. I don’t know if Catholics invented spring cleaning, but for Holy Week, it just makes sense. If you’re like me, you probably don’t particularly like to clean…so taking the first two days of Holy Week to do manual labor and serve my family in this way just feels good and right. Each room in our home will be deep cleaned and prepped for a new season.
Dinners on these nights are typically just easy dinners and/or using up any leftovers that we have in the refrigerator to clear out space for the Easter feast that’s coming.
Spy Wednesday
On this day, I finalize my Easter menu and make one final grocery order. I ensure that all Easter basket gifts have been purchased and that all Easter attire is in order. If we haven’t purchased it {aside from Easter flowers} by the end of day today, it simply will not be purchased because we won’t be returning to a store until after Easter.
Since Spy Wednesday is the day in which Judas formally agrees to betray Jesus for money, I love to use an idea that I found on Catholic Icing. For dinner, we make homemade cream cheese rangoons {AKA Money Bag Wontons} because they symbolize a pouch of coins like what Judas was willing to betray Jesus for…we also make some homemade Chicken Fried Rice to complete the meal.
Following dinner, we have an at-home Tenebrae service because our parish doesn’t offer Tenebrae. If you’ve never heard of Tenebrae, please check it out. It is an ancient tradition that is one of the most beautiful ways to usher in the darkness of Triduum. You can find the at-home Tenebrae service that we use here.
Holy Thursday
On Holy Thursday, we do another beautiful tradition called the Seven Churches Visitation. Traditionally, these visitations were done at night following the Holy Thursday Mass, but there is no way that we could hit all seven churches in our area at night before they are all locked until morning. So, we do our Seven Churches Visitations during the day. We choose seven churches in our area- we start just north of us in North Carolina and hit churches from there to Georgetown, SC which is about a 2 hour drive if you were to drive it straight from beginning to end. At each church, we pray two stations of the cross and have a bit of personal prayer time in front of the blessed sacrament before heading to the next church. Once we finish up at all seven churches, we have a nice lunch at a local restaurant because this is the last full meal we will have until Easter dinner. Like I said, this is one of my most favorite traditions, but it is an all day affair. We end the day with Holy Thursday Mass at our local parish followed by keeping watch with Jesus for a couple of hours of silent adoration in front of the Blessed Sacrament. We then drive home in silence as we ponder on what Jesus was going through at that very moment.
One other thing our family focuses on throughout Holy Thursday is making a point to do a few acts of service for family members or people we encounter throughout the day in the spirit of charity and humility that Jesus modeled for us as He washed the disciples feet.
Good Friday
After what usually turns out to be a pretty sleepless night, I will get up early and bake homemade Hot Cross Buns {a Good Friday tradition} for my family. Since Good Friday is a day of fasting and abstinence, we only allow ourselves a very small serving of these delicious buns, but it is usually enough to hold us over until dinner {our one meal of the day}. We abstain from meat on all Fridays of the year, but fasting and abstaining on Good Friday takes on a whole new meaning and purpose.
Good Friday in our home is a very quiet and somber day. There are very few words spoken. Electronics are silenced. We head to the church early to sit in silence and try to unite ourselves with Jesus. At noon, our parish will pray the Stations of the Cross. Following Stations of the Cross, we will continue to sit in silence until our Good Friday Veneration of the Cross service at 3pm. Good Friday & Holy Saturday {until the Easter Vigil} are the only days of the entire year where Mass is not celebrated. From noon-3pm we should be focused on nothing but Jesus and His suffering and death. The world and everything in it can wait. There are more pressing matters at hand.
Following our Good Friday service, we will return home in silence to have dinner and watch The Passion of the Christ.
Holy Saturday
This is another somber day of silence. Easter preparations are underway. The hope and anticipation is building. We work together to prep dishes for Easter dinner…and we refrain from partaking in any Easter celebrations until after the Easter vigil. That means no egg hunts or Easter parties/dinners on Saturday. Jesus is not risen yet. We are still separated from Him, so there can be no celebration.
As we shower and get dressed for Easter vigil, the excitement builds. On the drive to the church, you can almost feel the energy in the air. We all know what is coming. We walk into a dark church. We wait and pray. And then suddenly the Pascal Candle is lit. The procession begins. The deacon proclaims “The Light of Christ” as we all light our individual candles. The deacon begins the Exsultet. The readings are read….and then the lights all come on, the bells are ringing, the Gloria is sung, and the greatest celebration ever continues. EASTER HAS COME. HE IS RISEN IN DEED!
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