.
This beautiful book,
Holy Week, by Dom Cabrol, O.S.B., has some short and powerful observations about this central doctrine of the Catholic Faith.
In the second section of the Introduction, II. OUR LORD'S LAST WEEK UPON EARTH, we find the following:
...On Maundy Thursday Our Lord was again at Bethania, having returned the evening before. This day was the first day of the azymes, and in the evening the Jєωs would eat the pasch in Jerusalem. Jesus sent two of his best loved disciples, Peter and John, to make all things ready for the supper in the house of a wealthy Jєω. This was the last meal Our Lord was to take with his disciples, and
so great an event was to take place during it that it was fitting that all should be done with as much solemnity as possible. The Cenacle was a large room, becomingly decorated for a feast. Before the institution of the Holy Eucharist Our Lord washed the feet of His apostles; the account of this in St. John's Gospel is read during a ceremony which takes place on Maundy Thursday...
The account of the Last Supper comes in the Passion according to the three synoptic writers. It was at this moment that there was
strife amongst the apostles as to who should seem to be the greater, followed by the promise made to St. Peter that he should confirm his brethren and the warning of his betrayal (Luke xxii. 26-27; John xiii. 33-38).
[It was the moment when Our Lord warned of his betrayal that Leonardo da
Vinci chose as the moment he would depict in his famous Last Supper fresco.]
...The agony in the garden, the arrival of Judas and seizing of Jesus, the trial and condemnation, all these events which happened between Thursday night and Friday morning are
recounted in all the four Gospels, as also the account of the death and burial of Our Lord.
On this tragic Friday night all seems lost from the human point of view. The apostles, completely demoralized, have scattered and hidden themselves. Nothing is heard of their doings on the following sabbath day, only the placing of the guard round the sepulchre by the chief priests and Pharisees is mentioned. It was on the day following the Sabbath, our Sunday, that the sudden glory of the Resurrection shone out with the dawn.
III. THE LITURGY OF HOLY WEEK
...Palm Sunday and the Other Days of Holy Week...From the liturgical point of view
the last three days of Holy Week [the Sacred Triduum]
are the most important of the whole year. Each has its special liturgy and ceremonies; Maundy Thursday, the institution of the Eucharist, the blessing of the holy oils and the
Mandautum or washing of the feet; Good Friday has a series of ceremonies...
Maundy Thursday and Good Friday are, liturgically speaking, one, being so intimately connected, as Holy Saturday is with Easter Day.
This division simplifies the explanation of the ceremonies taken as a whole.
...
To understand the meaning of the liturgy
it must be remembered that Holy Week ends on Saturday evening before the night office begins because this latter belongs to another part of the liturgy, that of
Paschal Time which
lasts till the Ascension, or rather until
Pentecost. It is the sacred number of fifty days corresponding to the season of Lent,
a season all of joy and triumph setting off one
of penance and mortification. [Elsewhere we see, there at one time was a great curtain that was drawn across the sanctuary during the Triduum, such that the faithful underwent the same exclusion from the sacred mysteries that all the public sinners had to endure the rest of the year. This practice was eventually abandoned, but there are still some churches that retain it, such as the Eastern Coptic Orthodox.]
...
Holy Week is the culminating point of the liturgical year, the great week during which we spend those last days of Our Lord's life on earth in union with him. The Church shows the tend of her thoughts by
deeply moving ceremonies full of profound meaning, which do far more than any other exercise could to teach the Christian the reality of the mysteries of faith and fill his heart with grateful love for Our Saviour.
...
Holy week is the most important of all the liturgical seasons, and this not only because the Church desires her children to spend these days in recollection and prayer, but because
these very prayers and rites have been preserved with such loving veneration that they are the most ancient portion of the liturgy, and most truly representative of the primitive spirit and character. This is the reason why archaeologists, historians and liturgists have studied this part of the liturgy so carefully. Their works are of the greatest interest to those who study the historical origin of our ceremonies. (The principal works on this subject are found in the attached biographical index.)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Note<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
This was written and published in several editions from 1926-1927. How could the author have anticipated at that time that the 'liturgists' of the next generation would be digging into history to discover reasons that they could use as excuses to DISCARD these ancient rites, and in the worst cases, and such is a matter of docuмented fact, blanket statements of some claim to antiquity was pronounced as the reason to do so, without providing any proof of the historical basis. Then later, it was discovered that there was in fact NO historical basis at all for some of those claims. This was a typical ploy of Annibale Bugnini, for example, and it is on record. When it was discovered, this was why he was banished by Pope Paul VI to a distant country, to live out his years in exile from his erstwhile position of influence. But the damage had been done. If Paul VI really was a man of his convictions, why didn't he UNDO the damage? It seems to me that he merely threw Bugnini under the bus as a fall guy, a scapegoat, to appease the traditionalists, but the changes themselves were entirely acceptable to Paul VI, and he was secretly happy that the ancient rites were being de-constructed. IMHO.
NONETHELESS, the revised versions that the CMRI and the SSPX, for example, are using contain much moving symbolism and beauty for our edification, and we are well-advised to participate as best we can in them with a spirit of submission to God's will.
We should not go in there with a chip on our shoulder, or to grumble about what IS NOT THERE anymore. What you see and hear and do tonight, Holy Thursday, and tomorrow, Good Friday, and subsequently in the Paschal Season on Holy Saturday evening and Easter Sunday morning, is what God has provided you in this time of great confusion, and you are well-disposed to edify yourself by thinking and praying over the
things that we have as well as
the things that we have recently lost, as the Scripture says,
"Therefore every scribe instructed in the kingdom of heaven
is like to a man that is a householder
who bringeth forth out of his treasure
new things and old" (Matt. xiii. 52).
.