Entering Holy Week 2026
We enter the richness of Holy Week awed by all that the Church sets before us. God’s love for us is immeasurable. Again and again Cistercian authors invite us to ponder God’s love being shared with us in so many ways.
At Lauds we sing a hymn whose lyrics were written by a contemporary Benedictine, Sister Genevieve Glen:
Let us not boast in foolishness but in the cross of Jesus Christ,
who ransomed us from faithlessness with his own blood as purchase price.
When ruthless enemies arose, he came in love to take our part;
to foil the plotting of our foes, he sacrificed with willing heart.
O Lamb of God, we sing your praise with Father and with Spirit blest.
Grant us to serve you all our days and dwell with you in endless rest.
Perhaps you can sense in these words that the incarnation and the Lord’s passion, death and resurrection are of a piece, not segmented out, but of one great movement for our salvation. And we come through Lent guided to consider in these holy days what God is accomplishing all through time, to bring us to share eternity with him. To help us in Lent and in Easter time we can look to Saint Bernard’s “Sermons for Lent and the Easter Season”. Dom Jean Leclerq tells us: “Modern man is in a hurry; he likes to discover ideas quickly without much reading and even his prayer is hasty. The aim of the ancient and medieval spiritual authors was not to provide food for reflection; rather, they sought to encourage an experience through recollections of a poetical nature. They gave free rein to their imagination in a way that, to us, seems more like fantasy than thought. They wrote playfully of symbols and were given to variations on biblical themes that appear more rhapsodic than strictly theological. The medieval style often seems obscure but is, in fact, mysterious. The deliberate lack of clarity hides inexhaustible treasures. Each reading of St. Bernard brings to light unsuspected riches.”
You may find these quotes from Saint Bernard helpful:
“Unhappy the person who spends all his time with things outside, ignorant of his own inner self; he thinks himself to be something when he is nothing; he deceives himself.” Sermon 2
“Weakness of conscience is produced by weakness in endurance.” Sermon 3
“Christ has to live in a person who does not live in himself.” Sermon 6
May Holy Week lead us all to the great joy of Jesus’ resurrection and the awareness that Jesus desires to share new life with us!
