Special Week Calls For Special Prayers

I should have posted this a week or two ago but just thought of it this morning. Pray extra hard for your parish priests and deacons and whoever else is instrumental in liturgy planning and execution this week. This week is filled with the most beautiful masses and services of the liturgical year. Translation - a LOT of work! Even though my dad is a deacon, I never had a clue as to how much planning and preparation and hard work goes into this one week of the year. It wasn't until I worked at my church for a few years that I realized that this week alone translates into weeks of meetings to plan the masses, time spent contacting people to ask them to be a part of the masses, and practices to get the people who are part of the masses to do the things that they need to do in the right order/speed/way that they need to do them! In other words, it is a lot of work and only a few people doing all of that work!

However, it is all worth it on Thursday, Friday and Saturday of this week when the Church's most beautiful liturgies take place. I am so pumped up right now just thinking of the week coming up. The feet washing and altar stripping (which I get to do again - 3rd year in a row!) on Thursday. Kissing the cross on Friday. And, well, I can't narrow the Easter Vigil down to just one thing...the dark, the candles, the beautiful readings that tell you how we have gotten where we are, the people entering the church, and on and on and on!!!

My sweet husband, who knows just how much this week means to me, has encouraged me to try to make all 3 of the masses/services (I'm not sure what the correct term for Friday's service is since it's not a mass) this week despite the fact that it means he will have to have all 3 kids alone night after night. It is even more amazing that he is so understanding when you take into account that he is not Catholic! I don't know that I'll make it to all 3 but I'm sure going to try.

And tomorrow, we get to wave our palms in celebration of Christ's triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Even though we know what is to follow, for this one day, he gets to be the celebrated King. I wonder if He even knew that what was about to happen was so close at this point. I hope not, I hope He got to enjoy it...at least for that one day.