Passiontide Begins March 26th, 2023

They took up stones therefore to cast at Him: but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple. John 8:59, the last words of the Gospel of Passion Sunday

Today is the commencement of Passiontide, the final two weeks of Lent, when Our Lord in a very literal sense hides Himself from our view. From now until the Easter Vigil, all the statues and images in our Churches will be covered, with the crucifixes being revealed during the liturgy of Good Friday. The veiled statues are a somber reminder that Our Lord is withdrawing from us and will soon be totally removed from our sight. The medieval French bishop Durandus connects the veiling of the statues with the way that Christ veiled His divinity during His Passion. As the prophet Isaiah says, “as one from whom men hide their faces, He was despised, and we esteemed Him not” (53:3).

In Masses of the season, the Psalm "Iudica me" is not said at the prayers at the foot of the altar, and there is no Gloria Patri at the asperges, Introit, or Lavabo.  

Dom Gueranger: After having proposed the forty-days’ fast of Jesus in the Desert to the meditation of the faithful, during the first four weeks of Lent, the Holy Church gives the two weeks, which remain before Easter, to the commemoration of the Passion. She would not have her children come to the great day of the immolation of the Lamb, without their having prepared for it by compassionating with him in the sufferings He endured in their stead.