The Holy Week at Home

CEBU, Philippines — The Holy Week this year starts tomorrow, Palm Sunday. The week ahead, being a time of solemn observance, provides good opportunity for reflection, for individuals and for families. And it can be best done at home.

As the world outside slows down during the Holy Week, within the all too familiar environment of home family members may take the chance to check their individual life directions, the current state of affairs in the family, and how one another are doing. Summer may be traditionally a time for family excursions, but just a week is not much of a chunk of time to spare from the frolic.

When the family chooses to stay put at home, everyone may have to put everything down – no distraction of fun and technology. Instead, they may just be quiet together, to feel one another’s presence, and relish the comforting warmth of one another’s company. Now at last, even for just this short period, everyone may focus their attention on one another – face to face.

There are various challenges facing families today. Both parents are so busy at work to have time to guide their children. And even if parents can carve out some little time for the family now and then, the kids are often so preoccupied with a lot of things to even notice that their parents are there.

Nowadays everyone is so caught up with day-to-day pursuits to have time for thinking things over – especially things like where one’s life is headed or the life direction one wants to take. Parents worry about their children, but that’s about all there is to it. Simply worrying does not get anything done.

The Holy Week is a good time for the family to be truly “home” together. After all, home is where family members rush and rest, where they hope and worry, where they love and forgive. The characters that people carry with them out to the world are mostly shaped at home.

Time seems to be always scarce in today’s world. But, in fact, it has always been this way since the days of old. It feels like one lifetime is never enough to cover the whole business of living.

Truth is, there is enough time for the truly important things. People will go out of their way for something that really matters to them. The problem is, most people cannot distinguish what’s truly important.

Faith is important. But only few people take it seriously to carry out their faith in their actual lives. Today’s young people, in particular, would rather be playing video games than ponder on the workings of God in their lives. Most parents, for their part, spend long hours at work – and still bring some of their work home.

Even supposedly mature adults find certain concepts too deep to fathom – like the a “force” holding everything in the universe in place, making way for the seasons that support all earthly life, producing the very plants and animals that are food for humans, and other such natural cycles. They find these things too complex to comprehend because they hadn’t been earlier initiated thinking about it at home. Minds that are not trained to ask never find answers.

The family conversations during the Holy Week at home need not be too profound, though, especially where little children are involved. It can be enough for parents to point out to the kids how the simple act of breathing itself sustains life. And the air that everyone breathes is given free. Now, who gives it?

The teenagers may be encouraged to figure out how certain habits affect the body and mind, and create corresponding behavior patterns. Cigarette smoking, for example, can affect the natural condition of the cells in the body, eventually causing damage to the body organs. The realization can make them become more careful to even try it.

Another good point for discussion is the various little household wastes that eventually find their way to the rivers and the sea, creating poison for marine life. Seafood becomes scarce and its prices go up, depriving many poor homes of an important nutrient in their diet. Among growing children, lack of iodine, which is mainly sourced from seafood, can have lifelong repercussions. Widespread deficiency of this vitamin alone can endanger the coming generations.

There is only so much that can be covered in one week. The discussions at home during the Holy Week will not yield all the answers. The important thing is to start the minds of family members to wonder, to inquire, to ask questions.  That’s the path towards enlightenment.