The beginning of Holy Week is here. Can you believe that Ash Wednesday was all the way back on Feb. 17? Now we enter the home stretch to Easter Sunday.

Perhaps I should be more careful with my words. By describing the next several days as the home stretch, it might convey that the road from today through Easter will be easy or quick. Hardly.

The holiest week of the year culminates in the joyful resurrection of Jesus Christ but to get there we must encounter denials, betrayals, injustice, violence, and murder.

Palm Sunday leads off the grind and is pretty much a microcosm of Holy Week itself. This morning the opening gospel reading depicted Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem as crowds paved his way with palms and shouted “Hosana!” However, the heroic sentiment quickly turned to shouts of “Crucify Him”. Christ’s Passion is not for the faint of heart.

Sloan and Beau stand outside St. Mary Catholic Church (Spokane Valley) after Palm Sunday mass this morning. Palm Sunday is the beginning of Holy Week and a great reminder how we can profess to love Jesus Christ but then quickly betray him.

During his homily today at St. Mary Catholic Church (Spokane Valley), Deacon Dan Glatt likened the change of heart from the crowd to our own sins. There is no doubt that some of the same people who laid palms for Jesus would later demand his crucifixion, swaying Pilate to put him to death. However, Christ didn’t die simply because of cruel public opinion. He also died for our sins—the minor and major misgivings we commit each day. In the same way that the crowd pledged allegiance to Jesus but then turned on him, we do the exact same thing by calling ourselves Christians and then sinning. We need to own our culpability in the death of Jesus.

One way we can do this during Holy Week is to carry the cross. During his Passion, Christ painstakingly carried the barbaric mechanism of his death until he received assistance from an onlooker who carried some of the load. We need to always do our part to carry the load, too. However, as Fr. Leonard Mary explained in a homily I watched before my family headed to church this morning, Holy Week provides an opportunity to perhaps carry more weight than we usually do.

So what does it mean to carry the cross? Well, we can start by denying our own desires and embracing suffering. We can be especially cognizant of our sinfulness and do whatever we can to choose holiness instead. When we feel like the load is too heavy to carry, we can summon the strength to go a little further.

Thus, instead of treating Holy Week as the home stretch of Lent, let’s consider it the pinnacle. That way, when we arrive at Easter Sunday, instead of finding ourselves at the end of a road, we will instead find ourselves reinvigorated and inspired by Christ’s resurrection to continue on the path to salvation. Don’t Blink.