In Spiritu Feria Quartæ Hebdomadæ Sanctæ
As the Church approaches the climactic mysteries of the Holy Triduum, Feria Quarta Hebdomadæ Sanctæ—Holy Wednesday—marks a final turning point in the Lenten journey. Traditionally, this day is steeped in a growing silence and somber anticipation. The betrayal of Judas looms, and the shadows of Gethsemane lengthen. The readings for reflection, when drawn from the deep well of Isaiah and St. Luke’s Passion narrative, place before our hearts a portrait of Christ that is both majestic and crushingly meek.
We gaze upon Isaiah 63:1–7, the mysterious figure “coming from Edom, with dyed garments from Bosra,” and we are startled: “Why is thy apparel red, and thy garments like theirs that tread in the winepress?” (Isa 63:2). The answer comes: “I have trodden the winepress alone.” Here we see the Warrior-Messiah, drenched in blood not His enemies’, but prophetically His own—a paradox of victory through voluntary suffering. St. Ambrose, in his commentary on Isaiah, tells us, “This is not the blood of others, but His own Passion; He stains His garments with His own blood to show the cost of our redemption.”
But this Warrior is the same figure revealed earlier in Isaiah 53—a chapter beloved and pondered by the Fathers. “Who hath believed our report?” (Isa 53:1). The answer, tragically, is few. Here Christ is not clothed in splendor but “despised and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with infirmity.” St. Jerome writes, “In this chapter Isaiah is not a prophet but an evangelist, foretelling with precision the entire Passion of our Lord as if it were already fulfilled.” The Church reads Isaiah 53 every year during the Tenebrae of Holy Week, letting the words fall like droplets from the Chalice of Christ’s sufferings.
This dual vision—of the triumphant yet crushed Redeemer—is brought to dramatic culmination in the Passion according to St. Luke (22:39–71; 23:1–53). There, in the Garden of Olives, Christ “being in an agony… prayed the longer. And His sweat became as drops of blood trickling down upon the ground.” (Luke 22:44). St. Cyril of Alexandria saw in this agony the fulfillment of Isaiah’s “treading of the winepress alone”: “He was sorrowful unto death, not as fearing death, but that He might bear in Himself all the afflictions of our race.”
The Passion in Luke’s Gospel is marked by an intense inner dignity in Christ’s silence. Before His accusers, He speaks little. Before Pilate, before Herod, before the high priests—He is the Lamb foretold in Isaiah 53:7: “He was offered because it was His own will, and He opened not His mouth.” St. Augustine draws out the mystery: “The Word made flesh became silent, that by His silence He might speak more loudly to the humble of heart.”
In these final hours of Holy Week’s liturgical preparation, the Church invites us to meditate not only on what Christ suffered, but on why and how He did so. His Passion was not mere passive endurance, but an active conquest. He drank the chalice willingly. He walked into the winepress alone. He bore our griefs deliberately. The Fathers are unanimous: this was no accident, no mere martyrdom—this was the victory of Divine Love.
Holy Wednesday, in the older rites, often includes the reading of the Passion according to St. Luke in Tenebrae, with the extinguishing of candles symbolizing the desertion of Christ and the creeping approach of the darkness of Good Friday. But even here, light remains: the veil of the Temple will be torn; the centurion will confess, “Indeed, this was a just man.” (Luke 23:47).
St. Leo the Great, in one of his Lenten sermons, beautifully captures the paradox of the Passion:
“The Lord chose to undergo His Passion not only for the sake of justice, but so that, by the wondrous exchange, the guilt of all might be washed away in the blood of One innocent.”
(Sermo 55, De Passione Domini)
Let us then, on this Holy Wednesday, stand between Isaiah’s winepress and Luke’s Gethsemane, between the Warrior and the Lamb. Let us watch with Christ for one hour. Let us weep for our sins. Let us adore the blood-stained garments of our Redeemer.
And as the Church enters into the Sacred Triduum, may we not flee, as the disciples did, but remain—beneath the Cross, beside the tomb, awaiting the dawn.
Suggested Devotional Practice for Holy Wednesday:
- Spiritual Reading: Read Isaiah 53 slowly, as if listening to an eyewitness of the Passion.
- Prayer: Recite the Seven Penitential Psalms, offering them in union with Christ’s agony in the garden.
- Silence: Dedicate an hour of silent adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, or in your home, meditating on the loneliness of Christ in Gethsemane.
- Liturgical Participation: Attend or pray the Office of Tenebrae if possible, embracing the beauty of its mournful chants.
“By His bruises, we are healed.” (Isa 53:5)
May this healing mark your soul this Holy Week, and may you carry the fragrance of the Passion into the glory of the Resurrection.