One danger of Holy Week is to turn away from contemplation, as the goal, towards meditation, as the goal. It’s easy to get caught up in all the acts of doing stuff. There is so much we could do that is spiritually good. We need to be careful and mindful. We might have to pull back and remember that, in prayer, doing is not as good as receiving. I know that I have to!

Of course, all Christian lives involve both contemplation and meditation (like all Christian lives involve both contemplation and action). But contemplation, the silence of it, the cessation of the whirling mental winds and cessation of the conscious moralizing, is better. Direct placement in the presence of Jesus and the truth of the mysteries of light is better. Seeing Jesus without some of the veils of mental activity is better.

One danger of Holy Week is to invert this. It’s a bit too tempting some days, a bit too easy. In Lent, in Holy Week, and in the Paschal Triduum, there are many invitations to meditate, do mental work (in its way, a form of action), to moralize about one’s sins, to rouse certain feelings in ourselves, participate in activities that may not be where one is being led by the Spirit. These are good things in themselves. They are very good things in themselves. But they’re not always what the soul needs. We shouldn’t think that all good Christians will accomplish X, Y, and Z during Holy Week. Sometimes we’re at a different place. This is OK.

It’s OK to think or say,

“No, I don’t want to do the Stations of the Cross right now, because my mind is tired and all I can do is love Jesus and ask him to help me. I can’t concentrate on complicated mental work. And I don’t think he’s asking me to.”

“No, I’d rather hear Mass ten, twenty, times than do that devotional exercise that makes my head hurt. If you want to do it, please do; but it’s not for me right now.”

“I don’t want words, complicated meditations, books… I just want to sit at the foot of the tabernacle until my Jesus is taken away.”

“No, right now, I don’t want to meditate extensively on the sins that I’ve done, because I’m thinking of, contemplating, and just experiencing how much the Cross is a mystery of light.”

“No, right now, I don’t want to turn the Cross into an exercise in moralizing, looking inside myself, and examining myself. I don’t want to think about how much I’d be suffering if I were Jesus. I don’t want to try to imagine, imagine, imagine, think, think, think. Not right now. Another time perhaps, but not right now. It’s not necessary right now. The fact is, Jesus is Jesus; Jesus was Jesus; this happened. I want to look on, gaze on, be rapt by, the great mystery of his life, not meditate on any specific comparison to mine.”

“I don’t get where all this moralizing about sin is coming from. Yes, it is part of Holy Week. But the greater part is light! Just like the Mass. The heart is Love. I don’t understand another emphasis.”

“No, I don’t feel any particular need to change and form my feelings, e.g., guilt, sorry, fear. Right now, Jesus is handling my feelings and emotions much better than I can. So why would I try to control my feelings and focus on my feelings? That doesn’t make sense right now. That would be to give meditation priority over contemplation – indeed, to give myself priority over Jesus.”

In short:

“No, I don’t want to do mental work, because I’m just looking on Jesus.”

Provided it is true, there is nothing wrong with saying any of this. We don’t have to be super-Christians devoted to an abundance of meditative exercises, spiritual exercises, and discursive thoughts. We might do mental work; it doesn’t mean we have to! When Jesus got tired, he fell asleep in the boat. When Jesus got exhausted, he just told his Father that he didn’t want to go on (but not his will, but his Father’s, be done!) and stayed awake with him all night. He didn’t burden his mind with meditation and mental exercise beyond its capacities. Unless our vocation in the Church demands otherwise, we are under no such obligation either. We don’t have to do better than Jesus.

Just because it’s Holy Week, doesn’t mean that the counsel of Saint Francis de Sales, Doctor of Charity, has lost its meaning:

If, while saying vocal prayers, your heart feels drawn to mental prayer, do not resist it, but calmly let your mind fall into that channel, without troubling because you have not finished your appointed vocal prayers. The mental prayer you have substituted for them is more acceptable to God, and more profitable to your soul. I should make an exception of the Church’s Offices, if you are bound to say those by your vocation – in such a case these are your duty.

Or that of Saint John of the Cross, the Church’s Mystical Doctor:

Therefore directors should not impose meditation on persons in this state [of contemplation], nor should they oblige them to make acts or strive for satisfaction and fervour. Such activity would place an obstacle in the path of the principal agent who, as I say, is God, who secretly and quietly inserts in the soul loving wisdom and knowledge, without specified acts… (Living Flame, St 3, #33)

In the order of values, contemplation comes before action; contemplation comes before meditation.

That’s the Gospel. It’s the Gospel for the weak, the broken, the poor, the fatigued, when they are lovers of God!

The Gospel is for people who are little!

The Gospel isn’t for super-Christians who always meditate, examine, think, feel. Jesus came for those of us who just want to love and rest in him when we are heavy-laden.

That is the first thing Holy Week proposes. The liturgies say it loud and clear.

The liturgy wants to throw us directly into God’s hands at all times. The great liturgies of Holy Week and the Paschal Triduum do not demand great mental work. They do not purport to control our feelings. They do not purport to command our mental attention in minute details. They are simple. They ask us simply to gaze on the Beloved: the Entry into Jerusalem, the Institution of the Eucharist, the Agony at Gethsemane, the Torture and the Crown of Thorns, the Way of the Cross, the Crucifixion, the Burial, the Resurrection… All are light! They bring light. They focus on light. They are light because Jesus is being glorified.

And light is obviously not the same thing as meditation or mental running-about.

Holy Week is not about meditation or spiritual exercises. Or, in the measure that it is, meditation and spiritual exercises are not the goal. Meditation should always lead to love, silent love, unspoken love, virtually unspeakable love – contemplation. Even in Holy Week. Especially, let’s say, in Holy Week.

If, like me, you need to be reminded of this, I hope this post has been helpful. ^^