Every year, from Palm Sunday to Black Saturday, many Filipinos are extremely busy doing things for God to merit his love and forgiveness. They turn Holy Week into an orgy of penance and self-inflicted pain because they wrongly think that these can make them deserve God’s mercy. At the center of their activities is “what they must do.” They fail to appreciate “what God did for them.”

One time, I said a funeral mass for a man who suddenly died of heart attack. After communion, I gave the microphone to his wife so she could tell us something about him. Filled with self-pity, she said something like this: “Now that my husband is gone, I shall bring up my children all alone. I do not know how I will manage but I shall do everything to survive. My husband considered me as the apple of his eye. He often said I was the best thing that ever happened to him.”

If her husband could speak, perhaps he would say: Honey, you were supposed to deliver an eulogy for me. But your speech is all about you.”

Jesus must be feeling the same way during Holy Week because we have transformed it into something about us, not about Him. We obsessively plan, perform, and pile up good works and sacrifices in order to appease our troubled conscience. We concentrate on what we must do to deserve God’s mercy. This is precisely why Jesus despised the Pharisees. Their religion is one of self-promotion and self-forgiveness. They want salvation on their own terms.

Holy Week is not about us. It is about Jesus. During these holy days, He wants us to focus our attention on Him. He does not ask us to punish ourselves for our sins. After all, sin brings its own punishment. He does not demand that we marinate ourselves in guilt and remorse to deserve His mercy. After all, we can never deserve His mercy. If it were so, then it would no longer be mercy.

During Holy Week, churches teem with devotees doing the Way of the Cross, Visita Iglesia, or listening to the Siete Palabras. Sadly for many, the Holy Week ends on Good Friday. It is the culmination of their ritual penitential activities. No wonder, Filipinos are called “Juan de la Cruz.” We prefer Good Friday to Easter Sunday. Many Filipinos come to mass only on Good Friday. Which is ironic, because no mass is said on that day.

The Holy Week is about Jesus and his passion, death, and resurrection. It is about the amazing grace of forgiveness, conversion, and rebirth. At the last supper, Jesus told his disciples: “Do this in memory of me.” He addresses those same words to us now: “Whatever you do during Holy Week, please remember ME.”

-By FR. ROLANDO V. DE LA ROSA, O.P.

(emphasis mine.)

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