Alleluia!

Luke’s gospel [Luke 24:1-12] tells us that on that first Easter Sunday morning, in response to strange nonsensical-sounding news brought by Mary Magdalene and others, Peter ran to the tomb, saw that it was empty, and went home amazed at what had happened. John’s gospel [John 20:1-9] tells us that both Peter and John ran to see the tomb and also found it empty, but did not yet understand the scripture that he had to rise from the dead. Peter’s amazement and the disciples’ lack of understanding should not surprise us. We may suppose that the idea of resurrection makes little sense to our modern, scientific way of thinking. But in fact it made just as little sense to Jesus’ contemporaries, his disciples included. In his 2011 book on the subject, Pope Benedict XVI  said: “Anyone approaching the resurrection accounts in the belief that he knows what rising from the dead means will inevitably misunderstand those accounts and will then dismiss them as meaningless.”

Maybe that’s why none of the gospels give us an actual description of the event itself. Artists have tried to picture it, of course, but that’s art - highly imaginative art. We have nothing either visual or verbal that depicts the actual event of Jesus’ resurrection. What we do have, however, both visually and verbally, are the resurrection’s effects – first of all on the disciples, and then on the world, and finally on us.

Its effects on the disciples are what we read and hear in the gospel stories of the visits to an empty tomb and then later of the appearances of the risen Lord – and still later in the preaching of Saint Peter and others in the Acts of the Apostles and in the amazing response of those who heard their preaching, and finally in the testimony and letters of Saint Paul, who wasn’t there at all at Easter, but who eventually experienced the risen Lord himself and was forever changed as a result.

Its effects on the world were immediately evident in the short term in the enthusiastic response of Jews and pagans alike to the amazing story the apostles told. In the long term, its effects have been equally dramatic in how the story has spread and the Church has grown as a result, in the dynamism that is at the heart of the Church’s existence in the world and that has propelled it outward in almost 2000 years of world-transforming activity.

Finally, its effects are evident in us, transformed in mind and changed in heart, by the unique power of this utterly unexpected event, which has glorified (almost beyond recognition) the humanity Jesus shares with each of us, and which has brought us together in a way in which nothing else could have, empowering us not so much with new knowledge as with a new hope.  (If “knowledge is power,” hope is even more so.)

The resurrection is God’s powerful alternative to business as usual.  None of us were there that first Easter – and, had we been, we would surely have been as amazed and uncomprehending as the disciples themselves. But without yet understanding it, the world awoke on Easter to something totally new. Thanks to the fact that Christ has risen from the dead, the Christian faith offers an alternative to business as usual, offering instead to the entire world - and to each and every one of us in it - an invitation to hope. It is the power of that faith and hope that has brought us, whether here and now or a long time ago, to the water of baptism, and that brings us back Sunday after Sunday to hear the rest of the story and to experience the presence of the risen Christ in the breaking of the bread and his power in the new people he is transforming us into and the amazingly wonderful things that we can now do with one another and for the world as a result

Homily for Easter Sunday, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, March 31, 2013.

A Strange Day

In The Sign of Jonas, Thomas Merton (1915-1968) wrote of Holy Saturday: "The Night Office of this day is bewildering. The confusion of sorrow and joy is so complex that you never know where you are. The responsories might have been composed by James Joyce All the associations of terms and symbols are thrown into confusion. One responsory starts out with Jerusalem ... and you are all set to be glad, and you are told to mourn. Then in the end, speculatively, you find that you are saved. This is the product of the historical curcumstances through which the Holy Saturday liturgy has passed"

 

Merton wrote those words on April 15, 1949. He was referring, obviously, to the un-reformed Holy Saturday liturgy of those days. Of that un-reformed state of afairs, Philip J. Goddard, himself no great fan of our contemporary liturgy, has written: "Over the course of time the most important liturgical function of the entire year had become, so far as the faithful were concerned, merely a series of arcane and largely incomprehensible rites carried out very early in the morning by the clergy in churches empty of all except the odd liturgical enthusiast. It also involved the anomaly of celebrating the first Mass of Easter before the formal conclusion of Lent at midday. It is something of a wonder that this indefensible state of affairs was allowed to continue for so many centuries before the celebration of the Vigil was restored to its proper time." (Festa Paschalia: A History of the Holy Week Liturgy in the Roman Rite, 2011, p. 278).

It may have been an "indefensible state of affairs," but it has certainly left its mark on the character of Holy Saturday. Pius XII's 1955 reform aimed at setting that all right again, but of course, human behavior is hard to change. The new rubrics were dutifully observed, and more people than in the past (but probably nowhere near so many as on Holy Thursday and Good Friday) attended the restored Vigil. On the other hand, the idea of Holy Saturday as an "aliturgical" day never really caught on. The Easter Vigil, which was theoretically supposed to end with a Mass starting at about midnight, was widely anticipated at the earliest legally allowable hour (as early as 6:30 in one cathedral in the 1960s). This made for greater convenience, of course, for those reluctant to be out so late at night (even at a time when people were still flocking in great numbers to Midnight Mass at midnight on Christmas). It meant that decorating churches with elaborate Easter floral arrangements could be done late Saturday evening instead of sometime after midnight. Most of all, it created the idea - or rather re-inforced the existing older idea - that the Easter Vigil was a liturgy of Saturday rather than of Sunday.

It's quite clear in the current rite that Holy Saturday is the second day of the "Easter Triduum," and that the Easter Vigil is part of Easter Sunday, the third day of the Triduum. But that too is largely just jargon to "all except the odd liturgical enthusiast." It hardly helps that in the current rite the Vigil is really somewhat vestigial, and the ceremony appears essentially structured as an extra-long Saturday evening Mass.

Official language continues to plead that festive customs and practices connected with the former anticipation of the Resurrection on Saturday morning should be re-tooled. But that is now almost beside the point. Apart from the blessing of Easter food particularly popular in some ethnic communities, most such folkloric customs are themselves dead, dying, or largely vestigial themselves - thanks mainly to modernization, urbanization, and secularization. Meanwhile, even among the devoutly observant, Holy Saturday - far from being the day of prayer and fasting, focused on Crhsit's death and descent among the dead, that the Roman Missal enjoins - has become a day of feverish activity in anticipation of Easter. By rights, the church should remain bare until the Gloria, when the bells are rung and the statues uncovered. In fact, however, in most places the statues have been uncovered and the church itself festooned with flowers since sometime Saturday morning. As for fasting,  Vatican II's insistence that the paschal fast be prolonged through Holy Saturday (Sacrosanctumn Concilium, 110) has apparently been largely forgotten. (In one community where I was once briefly assinged, the feasting actually began on Good Friday evening with a grand - albeit meatless - seafood dinner celebration with several guests!)

It's eminently understandable, of course, that, back when Lent was taken seriously as a season of fasting, people were tired of it by then and eager to anticipate Easter a day early. And, despite the effective abandonment of Lenten fasting, that same mindset still seems to perdure today.

So this morning - after dutifully celebrating the Office of Readings and Morning Prayer in the church, at which we heard the Office's wonderful ancient homily depicting Christ's descent to the domain of the dead - I enjoyed a big buffet breakfast next door, before joining my dedicated parish volunteers in a morning of festive decorating. Then this evening, when it is still very much Saturday in our ordinary way of thinking, we will ring bells and sing Alleluia.

It is a very strange day indeed - but wonderful in its own way!

 

The Day of Preparation

I've always liked the old name for Good Friday, which it had until 1955 - Feria sexta in parasceve ("Friday, the Day of Preparation"). By New Testament times, the term had become standard - at least among Greek-speakign Jews for Fridays and the eves of major festivals like Passover. John's Passion narrative, which we will hear later today, uses the term to refer to the day of Jesus' death, making it clear that Jesus died onn the afternoon of the 14th of Nisan, the eve of Passover, indeed at roughtly thew hour at which the Passover lambs were being sacrificed in the Temple. The paschal character and symbolism of Jesus' death was thus empahsized in John's account, which has guided the liturgical observance of Holy Week for most of the Church's history.

 

Popular devotions - e.g., the Stations of the Cross - while admirable and spiritually very effective - have a certain incompleteness about them. they tend to focus on only one aspect of the Easter story - e.g., the passion and death of Jesus - detached fromt he totality of the story. The liturgy itself, however, never did that. (At least the pre-1970 liturgy never did that.) For centuries until 1969, the account of the institution of the Passover (Exodus 12:1-11 was read at the Good Friday litrugy, clearly connecting the Passion account which followed (and indeed the entire day) with the paschal mystery. Until 1955, that reading was also repeated at the Easter Vigil, further bringing home the connection. The 1970 lectionary moved the Exodus reading to the Mass of the Lord's Supper. Liturgical cognoscenti might well think of the Mass of the Lord's Supper as a kind of "1st Vespers" of Good Friday. (It is, in fact, the official beginning of the 1st day of the Triduum, which ends with the Liturgy of the Lord's Passion on Good Friday afternoon). For most modern people, however, Thursday and Friday are separate days. Few are likely spontaneously to see a connection between the Exodus reading and Friday's Passion account. And the common replacement of the Pange Lingua durign the Good Friday Veneration of the Cross with popular passion hymns like O Sacred Head or, worse, Were You There? further detaches Good Friday from its Easter connection and turns the whole day into just a historical anniversary of Christ's death.

 

Back in the 1950s, Good Friday was a popular semi-holiday. A lot of people got off work early, and in the immediate aftermath of the 1955 liturgical reform churches were often filled for the liturgy of Good Friday afternoon (and often as well on the evening before for the Holy Thursday Mass). Of course, even then a free afternoonwas for many an opportunity for shopping. Now, however, it has increasingly become the beginning of a long holiday weekend, with the obivous effect on attendance at the liturgy of the day.

 

Another casualty, of course, has been Tenebrae, which in its modern, morning verison has never quite caught on the way the older, afternoon version did. There were only seven of us there this morning, but we still snuffed the candles (see photo) and so started in a good spirit this special day - this "Day of Preparation" for our renewed appreciation of our participation in Christ's resurrection.

 

The Date of Easter

For as long as Easter has been celebrated it seems there have been disputes about its date. Despite the widespread desire for liturgical uniformity, Easter has more often than not been celebrated on different dates in different places. Thus, St. Ambrose (340-397) mentioned in one of his letters that, in the year 377, Easter was celebrated on at least three different dates - March 21 in Gaul, April 18 in Italy, and April 25 in Alexandria. The Western Church would not in fact achieve the desired unity of Easter observance for a few more centuries. To this day, as is well known, the Eastern and Western Churches continue to celebrate Easter on different dates – every once in a  while on the same date, occasionally a month apart, in most years one week apart. This year is one of those years when the Western and Eastern Easters are a full month apart – March 31 and May 5 respectively.

 Thus it was with great interest and some surprise that I read that Catholics in Israel, Jordan, and Cyprus will be celebrating Easter together this year according to the Julian calendar along with their Orthodox neighbors. Apparently, this follows a 2012 decision by the Holy Land’s Catholic Bishops, to be implemented ad experimentum this year.

This surprising decision will, however, thankfully have little effect on the many pilgrims from around the world, who will assemble to celebrate Holy Week and Easter at the traditional Holy Places in Jerusalem. The so-called “Status Quo” arrangements which regulate the different Christian communities’ usage of the Holy Places in Jerusalem and Bethlehem will keep the Catholic Easter celebrations in those cities on their Western dates. (Indeed, those same regulations require the celebration of the Latin Holy Week services to occur at their pre-1956 times –e.g., in the mornings of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday).

Of course, the most fundamental dating issue about Easter has always been the apparent disagreement between the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) and the Gospel of John. The former seems to portray the Last Supper as an actual Passover meal, while John very clearly indicates that the Last Supper was eaten before the feast of Passover and that Jesus’ crucifixion occurred on the Day of Preparation – indeed at the hour the Passover lambs were being slaughtered in the Temple. Hence, the reference (John 18:28) to the authorities’ refusal to enter Pontius Pilate’s praetorium lest they become ritually disqualified from eating the Passover (which obviously means they hadn’t already eaten it the evening before!). In his 2011 Holy Week book, Pope Benedict XVI noted that “it is becoming increasingly clear that John’s chronology is more probably historically than the Synoptic chronology” (p. 109). Certainly the Synoptic dating, which would suggests Jesus’ arrest, trial, and execution all took place on the holiday, seems presumptively implausible. And John’s chronology has been the one implicitly followed by the Church’s liturgy. (St. Paul’s “first fruits” imagery in 1 Corinthians 15:20 also seems to harmonize nicely with John’s dating).

Thus, prior to the new 1970 lectionary, there no references to the Passover in the Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord’s Supper (other than the opening words of the Gospel which explicitly begins Before the feast of Passover …). Good Friday, however, on which John’s Passion Gospel has traditionally been read, was full of Passover symbolism – starting with the original 2^nd Reading, Exodus 12:1-11, the familiar account of the first Passover in Egypt. (In 1970, this reading was inexplicably moved to become the 1^st Reading for Holy Thursday).

In past years, whenever I have celebrated the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, I have preached about the Eucharist, the priesthood, and the other obvious themes that Holy Thursday suggests, but I have always avoided any references to Passover. Just the opposite, on Good Friday I have usually used that day’s Gospel’s Passover imagery as a major reference point in preaching.

That the gospels invest the Last Supper with Passover motifs is undeniable, nor should it seem at all problematic. It may, however, be problematic if we start getting focused (as our symbolically starved, fundamentalistic modern style may incline us to focus) on the Last Supper as a sort of “Christian seder.” That can lead to all sorts of liturgical abuses (which were not exactly unknown back in the 1970s). Such an approach may diminish the ability to appreciate the actual Passover seder’s authentically Jewish character. (On the other hand, I’m all for Christians attending actual seders, if invited, or even having demonstration seders - apart from the liturgy - as a way of learning about both biblical and modern Judaism).   

And it is not just the authentically Jewish character of Passover which we may risk not appreciating, but the Christian Passover as well. Liturgy and tradition have always spoken of Easter as the Christian Passover. As if to bring that point home, the traditional Easter Vigil repeated Exodus 12:1-11, and even the contemporary ritual still retains the powerful account of the deliverance of the Israelites from the Egyptians at the Red Sea Exodus 14:15-15:1. It is, after all, on Saturday night – not Thursday – that the Church will exultantly proclaim: These then are the feasts of Passover, in which is slain the Lamb, the one true Lamb, whose Blood anoints the door-posts of believers. This is the night, when once you led our forebears, Israel’s children from slavery in Egypt and made them pass dry-shod through the Red Sea.

65

Today, I am officially a "senior citizen." To me that's really a big deal - and not just because of the discounts we seniors can qualify for! It wasn't so long ago, after all, that merely making it to 65 was itself an accomplishment. (It also wasn't so long ago - before social security and medicare - that old age correlated highly with poverty, something also not the case now).

Of course, if I could have the looks, the health, and the physical strength of a 25-year old, I'd be crazy to turn them down. But life doesn't make such offers. And the fantasy of combining the looks, health, and strength of a 25-year old with whatever wise lessons 65 years of living have taught is just that - a fantasy. I can only be who I am, which is to say who I have become by the inscrutable accidents of birth and time, combined with the multitude of many short and long-term choices made, and habits formed, and relationships bult - and broken - over the course of that same time.

When I think of myself as part of a generation (the earlier cohort of the post-war Baby Boom ), it's naturally tempting to focus on the the big picture stuff - all the great geopolitical and sociocultural transformations we have lived through and have been active participants in. In fact, while lots of really good stuff has happened in the world that our generation has been part of, the overall dynamic of change has been ruthless. That was already becoming threateningly evident only one-third of the way through my generation's journey. Back then (in the exciting and catastrophic year 1968), Norman Cousins is supposed to have said: “The trouble with trying to penetrate the vitals of the past quarter century is that 1940 was more than a hundred years ago. Into a few decades have been compressed more change, more thrust, more tossing about of men’s souls and gizzards than had been spaced out over most of the human chronicle until then. The metabolism of history has gone beserk.” If anything, the subsequent two-thirds of our generational journey have confirmed that insight and exacerbated it beyond anything imaginable in 1968. In some ways, I'd say the world today is even more unlike the world of 25 years ago than that year (1988) was unlike 1968! So much change, so rapid, and so substantial exacts a terrible toll on society, although on the whole our generation has managed to navigate the way well enough. It is rather those good looking, healthy, and strong 25-year olds - the Lost in Transition generation (to borrow the title of a seriously must-read, recent book about "emerging adults") - it is they that are having to pay the price, the very high price, of a civilization that increasingly has lost its moorings.

When I think of myself as an individual, however, I admit to more continuity than change. I am still very much the person I was at 20 or 25, at 30 or 40 or 50 or 60. Of course, circumstances have changed with time, important friendships have flourished and died, opportunities have come and gone, while successes achieved have been matched by the most dramatic and lasting failures. Yet, for all the physical and emotional wear and tear of aging and all the lessons learned (and hopefully true wisdom achieved), I still recognize my same self through it all.

When at age 33 I applied for admission to my religious community, I attempted to articulate - sincerely if also a bit awkwardly - a sense of providential grace guiding me through the ups and downs of life and leading me in a definite direction. I still feel that way today. (One of the things that then and since has so attracted me about the life and spirituality of Isaac Hecker was how he had a similar sense of providential grace and the great good he was able to accomplish as a result, in spite of external opposition and personal limitations). I have, however, over time, learned to trust the lessons of my own experience perhaps even more than I was earlier at ease doing.  While I owe a lot to older acquaintances, among them mentors and guides  now gone from the scene, I realize, especially when it comes to respecting and trusting experience, how blessed I have been by younger acquaintances, colleagues, and friends from whom I have also learned so much that is so significant.

In his Palm Sunday homily yesterday, Pope Francis said two things that especially resonated with me as I celebrate this special moment in time - in my time. The first was addressed to everyone. "Do not be men and women of sadness: a Christian can never be sad! Never give way to discouragement! Ours is not a joy born of having many possessions, but from having encountered a Person: Jesus in our midst; it is born from knowing that with him we are never alone, even at difficult moments, even when our life's journey comes up against problems and obstacles that seem insurmountable, and there are so many of them!"

The second thing I took from his homily was addressed to the young (in reference to World Youth Day): "we must live the faith with a young heart, always: a young heart, even at the age of seventy or eighty. ... With Christ the heart never grows old!"