During Holy Week, many of us suddenly become hyper-religious. We pray longer, attend more liturgical services, visit several churches, make the Way of the Cross, repent for our sins, and give up things we usually enjoy. These practices are beautiful, meaningful, and deeply rooted in tradition. But we must be honest about our motives for doing them. If we lose sight of these, Holy Week can easily turn into a “Do-It-Yourself” (DIY) project.

Why do we do what we do during these special days? Many of us think, “If I sacrifice more, this will appease my conscience.” Others say, “If I complete my panata, attend the Pasyon and Pabasa, and the Siete Palabras, God will grant me forgiveness.” Still others are motivated by this thought: “If I pray long and hard enough, I will become worthy of God’s love.”

But notice how all these thoughts are centered not on God, but on us and what we will receive in exchange for our penances. When our Lenten practices are focused on performance, effort, and achievement, we miss the very reason why Holy Week exists.

Holy Week proclaims that we are not the ones saving ourselves. As we read in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus is the main actor in the drama of redemption that we commemorate (Matthew 27:11-54). Salvation is a gift freely given. Jesus does not say, “Fix yourself first, and then come to Me.” Instead, He says, “You cannot save yourself. That is why I came.”As St. Paul reminds us, “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

This means our fasting, prayer, and penance by themselves cannot earn us salvation. They are ways to open ourselves to something we could never be worthy of. The suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ reveal that it is God who redeems and saves. No amount of mortification can replicate or replace what Christ has already accomplished on the Cross (John 19:30).

Consider fasting. It is not about proving how strong we are; it is about realizing how needy we are. Penance is not about punishing ourselves so we can pay Jesus for what He suffered for our sins. Penance is about letting go of those things that make it difficult for us to change for the better. Prayer is not about reciting novenas. It is about lifting our mind and heart to God and making an act of surrender. Our Lenten practices are not ladders we climb to reach God. They are doors we open to let God into our lives.

When Holy Week is a DIY project, we can perform all our Lenten observances and still remain the same. We can attend every ritual and ceremony and still keep God at a distance. We can give things up and still continue to cling to many things as our private possessions, unwilling to share them with others.

The antidote to this distortion is a shift in perspective. We must focus more on receptivity rather than human achievement, on trust in God rather than self-reliance. Holy Week invites us not to “do more” for God, but to allow God to do His work within us. It calls us to stand at the foot of the Cross not as performers proving our devotion, but as sinners in need of mercy.

So maybe this Holy Week, instead of trying to win favors from God through various forms of self-abnegation, we can stop trying to impress Him by loading ourselves with penances, tallying our prayers, and measuring our worth by how much pain we can endure. Holy Week is not about what we can do for God, but about allowing God to do great things for us.

Christianity is not a Do-It-Yourself religion. Holy Week is meaningful only when it leads us back to the Cross, where Jesus has already accomplished the work we could never do on our own.