Follow the Light

As I listened to our deacon sing the stirring words of the ancient Easter Proclamation (commonly called the Exsultet from its opening word in Latin), I thought back 26 years to my first experience of proclaiming it as a deacon. That year, I prepared myself to sing it by listening to a recording of it every day of Lent, listening and repeating it until I somehow had every note and every up-and-down of the melody memorized so as to fulfill that challenging chore – as the celebrant says to the deacon when blessing him beforehand – to proclaim his paschal praise worthily and well. How well I actually did I won’t venture to guess, but I think our own deacon did a much better job here tonight!

Thomas Merton once called the Exsultet "the key to the whole business.” The year it fell to him, as a deacon, to sing it, he wrote, “I am going to sing the whole of theology. It is marvelous. … And the people who hear it are learning all theology, and the Holy Ghost, Who operates what is signified, throws light in darkness upon the whole meaning of Christianity …” [April 6, 1947, and April 15, 1949]

Merton wasn’t alone in his praise. The great Pius Parsch once called the Exsultet "a hymn that never ceases to touch the heart and mind." It does so, by bringing us back to the heart of the ancient Passover story, which we recall tonight with this Vigil, just as the Jewish People have for so many centuries celebrated the Passover night’s annual return each spring. In the Book of Exodus we are told: This was a night of vigil for the Lord, as he led them out of the land of Egypt; so on this same night all the Israelites must keep a vigil for the Lord throughout their generations. That they have done, and so must we on this our annual Christian Passover night. On this night, when once God led Israel from slavery and brought them safely through the waters of the Red Sea, we too tonight follow the pillar of fire, our own Easter Candle marked with 5 grains of incense to signify the holy and glorious wounds of Christ’s passion, to relive that night when Christ broke the prison-bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld.

Tonight, having heard again the ancient story - its full meaning now unlocked for us by Jesus’ triumph over death - the Church simply cannot contain her joy. Sadly silent these past two days, the bells now ring again with all the clamor and clangor they can muster. As some of you know, the ringing of the bells has always been my favorite part of the Easter Vigil – the part I most look forward to, a moment of sheer joy to be remembered throughout the year, and beyond.

I’ll talk more about the bells tomorrow morning. Tonight, however, I’ll stick with the Easter Proclamation, the Exsultet, and the strange way we began this Vigil, walking in the dark behind the light of the Easter Candle. The Exsultet waxes eloquently (no pun intended) in praise of the Easter Candle - this pillar, which glowing fire ignites for God’s honor, a fire into many flames divided, yet never dimmed by sharing of its light, for its fed by melting wax drawn out by mother bees to build a torch so precious. … Therefore, O Lord, we pray you that this candle, hallowed to the honor of your name, may persevere undimmed, to overcome the darkness of this night.

Now a candle – even a big and beautiful one such as this – is still just a candle. The night outside is still dark, despite all our efforts to the contrary. Life is like that. We go through life more or less in the dark – or, as Downton Abbey’s Dowager Countess of Grantham would say, trying to overcome problem after problem, one after another. And we’re going to be better off if we stick together, like our little procession tonight, following the way led by that single candle - relying on one another and supporting one another in this community created by that candle’s glowing fired ignited for the honor of God. Just as God once led his Chosen People through the threatening sea and the frightening desert by the light of a pillar of fire, so he continues to lead his Church today through the dangerous darkness of our world by the amazing brightness of the Risen Christ.

So no wonder we ring bells tonight. How else will the world hear this story? And hear it the world must, for everyone’s sake! So our job, having huddled together in the dark and followed the light into this Church is now to spread it around, with the assurance, as Pope Francis has written, that “Christ’s resurrection is not an event of the past; it contains a vital power which has permeated this world” [EG 276]

“Do not be afraid,” Jesus told the women on Easter morning. Do not be afraid. Go tell the others! And that’s what they then went and did.

And, as they did then, so now must we.

Homily for the Easter Vigil, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, April 19, 2014

"He descended into hell"

A good number of people – including young families with children - turned out this morning for the traditional Blessing of Easter Food. I do it every year immediately after the morning Office of Holy Saturday. It says something about the importance of food in people’s lives – and the still surviving appeal of this traditional custom – that so many would be willing even to sit through the Office of Tenebrae just for a 5-minute Blessing of Easter Food at the end! That’s one of the reasons I do the Blessing then – precisely to encourage more people to attend Holy Saturday morning’s Tenebrae, an Office which contemplates Christ's descent among the dead (photo), which we routinely and probably unreflectively profess in the Apostles' Creed. It is an Office which (even in its modern form) I especially love, but which I would be the first to acknowledge is certainly an acquired taste!

In The Sign of Jonas, Thomas Merton (1915-1968) wrote of Holy Saturday Tenebrae: "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 circumstances through which the Holy Saturday liturgy has passed"

Writing on April 15, 1949, Merton was obviously referring to the then still unreformed Holy Saturday liturgy. Of that peculiar state of affairs, Philip J. Goddard (himself no great fan of our contemporary Holy Week 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 attended the restored Vigil than had in the past (and probably more than do so now). But 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 was especially convenient for those reluctant to be out late at night (even in an era when people were still flocking in great numbers to Christmas Mass at midnight). Also it meant that decorating churches with elaborate Easter floral arrangements could be done late Saturday evening instead of sometime after midnight.But it created the idea - or rather reinforced the existing older idea - that the Easter Vigil was a liturgy of Saturday rather than the first liturgy of Easter Sunday.

It is quite clear in the current (post-1969) 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 seems to be a well-kept secret for many. And it hardly helps that, in the current, now twice-reformed rite, the Vigil has really become somewhat vestigial, and the ceremony appears to all intents and purposes as just an extra-long Saturday evening Mass. Meanwhile, even among the devoutly observant, Holy Saturday - far from being the day of prayer and fasting, focused on Christ's burial 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 festooned with flowers since sometime Saturday morning. It was eminently understandable, of course, back when the Lenten fast was taken so much more seriously, that people were eager to anticipate Easter a day early. And, despite the effective abandonment of authentic Lenten fasting, that same mindset still seems to survive even to today.

So this morning - after dutifully celebrating the Office of Readings and Morning Prayer in the church, at which we heard the wonderful ancient homily depicting Christ's descent to the domain of the dead - I immediately shifted gear and joined my dedicated parish volunteers in a morning of festive decorating, complete with cookies and coffee.

It is, as I said in this space last year, a very strange day indeed - but wonderful in its own way!

Via Dolorosa at Market Square

At Gethsemane, in the Garden where Jesus’ passion began, modern pilgrims are sometimes told to imagine what a tale those olive trees could tell if they could only talk to us. Pilgrims in Israel typically aspire not just to walk the Way of the Cross but to visit as many as possible of the places sanctified by Christ’s presence and actions. Making his own pilgrimage there in the 1870s, the founder of my community, Isaac Hecker said: “after having been in the localities where the great mysteries which they express took place, one is impressed in a wonderful manner with their actuality. The truths of our holy faith seem to saturate one’s blood, enter into one’s flesh, and penetrate even to the marrow of one’s bones.” 

Whenever we walk the Way of the Cross, wherever we do so, we all become pilgrims sharing in that special experience.

Jesus’ prayer in the Garden reminds us of that other Garden, where the human race first said NO to God’s will, and which Jesus’ prayer in this Garden is intended to undo. For here Jesus accepts his Father’s will. His YES resets the course of human history, and invites us to come along with him.

Jesus’ command to his inattentive disciples, “remain here, and watch,” was no accident. The disciples’ sleepiness signifies letting one’s guard down – dangerously allowing easy access to the power of evil and sin, always at work in the world. The disciples’ sleeping foreshadows their running away in the next scene, but meanwhile it means they’re miss out on God’s power at work in Jesus’ prayer - Jesus resisting and defeating the power of evil at the very moment when it seems to be winning. Jesus’ prayer resists the tempter and decisively defeats the devil - by being obedient to his Father’s will for the salvation of the world. Jesus’ admonition, “remain here, and watch,” is addressed to us too – challenging us to stay awake with him, and so to share in his victory – healed and forgiven for ever in his Father’s kingdom.

Meditation on "The Agony in the Garden," Ecumenical Way of the Cross, Market Square, Knoxville, TN, Good Friday, April 18, 2014.

The Pope's Holy Thursday

As has become contemporary papal practice, Pope Francis celebrated both of the prescribed Holy Thursday liturgies yesterday. In the morning he celebrated the Mass of the Chrism in the splendid setting of Saint Peter's Basilica, attended by some 10,000 people, among them a host of concelebrating cardinals, bishops, and priests. Then, in the evening, he began the Easter Triduum with the traditional Mass of the Lord's Supper, celebrated in the somewhat untraditional setting of a center for elderly and disable people somewhat outside the City's historic center.

Of course, the site of the traditional stational church for the Mass of the Lord's Supper, the Lateran Basilica, was originally itself at some distance from the city's center. In the 4th century, Rome's center was still dominated by pagan temples and civic structures. Emperor Constantine gave the upstart Christians a proper cathedral, but it was located at the edge of the city. So, perhaps, the Pope's choice of venue for the Mass of the Lord's Supper at the margin of society was not so untraditional after all!

 

The purpose of the Chrism Mass is the blessing of the oil of the sick and the oil of catechumens and the consecration of the sacred chrism for use in the coming year in the various sacraments of the Church. But, the reformed Chrism Mass (itself a reform of something revived relatively recently in 1955) has since acquired a specific focus on the priesthood. It has become the prime ocasion for celebrating the priesthood, the institution of which is, of course, one of the themes of Holy Thursday. Fittingly, therefore, the Holy Father's homily at yesterday's Chrism Mass  was addressed to his "Dear Brother Priests" and focused entirely on the meaning of the priesthood. Perhaps appropriately for a Pope whose defining document thus far has been about "the Joy of the Gospel," Pope Francis spoke eloquently about "the joy of being a priest .. not only for the priest himself but for the entire faithful people of God."

 

In good Jesuit fashion, he enumerated "three significant features of our priestly joy." It is, first, "a joy which anoints us" - something that "has penetrated deep within our hearts," shaping us and strengthening us. It is "an imperishable joy." In one of his especially felicitous images, one with which we priests should find ready resonance, the Pope says: It can lie dormant, or be clogged by sin or by life's troubles, yet deep down it remains intact, like the embers of a burnt log beneath the ashes, and it can always be renewed." Thirdly, it is "a missionary joy," which "springs up when the shepherd is in the midst of his flock." Priests in properly pastoral ministry settings will especially resonate with that!

 

He then followed that with another trilogy - somewhat analogous to the three evangelical counsels - identifying priestly joy with poverty, fidelity, and obedience. The application to poverty is particularly powerful. Being "poor," the priest "has to seek his joy from the Lord and form God's faithful people. " Priestly identity, the Pope stresses, presupposes "an active and unwavering sense of belonging to God's faithful people." So, instead of "soul-searching and introspection," the Pope recommends getting out of oneself: "exit from yourself, exit to seek God in adoration, go out and give your people what was entrusted to you."

 

The homily concludes with the Pope's personal prayer  for priests - for new priests, for veteran priests, and for elderly priests.

 

Beautiful as was his homily, equally beautiful was the evening Mass, which in so many ways seemed to serve as an example of priestly joy experienced in putting into practice the principles articulated in his homily. Of course, the media's fixation with whose feet he was washing - specifically their sex - can only get in the way of appreciating all that.

 

There is, in fact, nothing novel about both sexes getting their feet washed. For centuries (before 1955, when Pius XII inserted the foot-washing as an optional rite in  the Mass of the Lord's Supper) bishops, abbots, and kings regularly performed the mandatum ritual apart from Mass, washing the feet of fellow clerics or poor men, while abbesses and queens similarly washed the feet of women. What presumably didn't happen in the past was men washing women's feet (or women washing men's feet). Such behavior would likely have been seen as scandalously inappropriate in most eras - and may still be so seen today in many parts of the world. In contemporary Western societies, however, the cultural presuppositions underlying male-female interactions have dramatically changed - with the result that in many places the idea of a priest washing the feet of women along with men no longer seems inappropriate. In fact, given contemporary conceptions of inclusion and equality, including members of both sexes seems increasingly appropriate to many. Since the foot-washing is now a very public part of a very public Mass and no longer the semi-public or even private rite it once was, this has become a major preoccupation for many on both sides of the issue.

 

Clearly, the mandatum may lend itself to multiple meanings and multiple symbolisms. One may see the mandatum ritual  as a kind of pantomime re-enactment of the Last Supper, in which case one may well wish to restrict the foot-washing - not just to men but to clerics. In terms of priestly spirituality and the bishop's special relationship with his priests, there may be merit to a bishop performing the ritual on his priests, deacons, and seminarians, for example. But the mandatum is not exclusively about any of that. It is not primarily about priesthood, per se. Rather, it is about imitating Jesus in his messianic self-abasement and thus offering the world an alternative model of relationships - something which all Christians are called upon to exemplify. That is something those more marginal Christian sects which have historically incorporated foot-washing into their regular worship practices have recognized. More to the point, it is something Pope Francis clearly recognizes and wishes to model for today's Church. Along with the morning's Chrism Mass and the Pope's superb homily about priesthood, the very moving, intimate celebration of the Mass of the Lord's Supper at a local residence for elderly and disabled people seemed to me to hit just the right note for Holy Thursday this year.

Living the Lord's Supper

This day we call Holy Thursday uniquely straddles the border between Lent and Easter. Earlier today our Bishop celebrated the last of our Lenten Penance services – echoing the ancient Roman practice of an end-of-Lent Thursday morning Mass at which were reconciled those who had done public penance during Lent.  The elaborate ritual for that Reconciliation of Public Penitents could still be found in our liturgical books up until the 1960s, even though by then it hadn’t been used for over 1000 years. 

A second, centuries-old Holy Thursday custom is the blessing of the holy oils, which we formally received at the beginning of Mass and which will be used to signify healing, strengthening, and consecration throughout the coming year in the sacraments of baptism, confirmation, holy orders, and anointing of the sick and for the consecration of churches and altars. 

Finally, with the setting of the sun, the Church crosses the threshold from Lent into Easter with this evening’s remembrance of the Last Supper, at which the various themes so long connected with this day all come together in the Eucharist we celebrate at this altar. For tonight we don’t just remember the Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples, as some interesting thing that happened a long time ago. Rather we celebrate how Jesus’ Last Supper continues in the Church as the Lord’s Supper.

With this festive celebration this evening, the Church begins the first of three dramatic days – the first devoted to Christ crucified, the second to Christ buried, and the third to Christ risen. We will end this first day, some 24 hours from now, with Mary at the foot of the cross, but we begin by remembering the most memorable meal in all of human history.

Saint Paul’s letters are among the oldest New Testament writings; and his First Letter to the Corinthians, from which we just heard, represents the earliest written account of Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples. It’s safe to suggest that none of those disciples, as they sat down to supper with on the day before the Passover holiday, understood that by time Passover began, 24 hours later, Jesus would be dead and buried, and that they would all be in hiding.

Certainly, none of them yet realized how this otherwise ordinary meal would be dramatically transformed by Jesus’ own words and actions into the Church’s central sacrament.

The New Testament tells us how, from the very beginning, Christian communities devoted themselves to the breaking of bread and prayers [Acts 2:42]. As the Church grew in size and expanded in influence, the Church’s worship, centered on the regular celebration of the Lord’s Supper as Christ’s priestly sacrifice of reconciliation, would in time transform, first, the Roman empire and, then, the ever wider world – as it must still continue to transform each one of us, caught up in the priestly embrace of Christ’s reconciling sacrifice.

For he is (in words of one early 6^th-century African Bishop) “the priest through whom we have been reconciled, the sacrifice by which we have been reconciled, the temple in which we have been reconciled, the God with whom we have been reconciled. He alone is priest, sacrifice, and temple because he is all these things as God in the form of a servant.”

So it is only fitting that we begin the first day of our Easter celebration, the day on which we will commemorate Christ’s passion and death, with this supremely priestly act of reconciliation, this Eucharistic sacrifice which sums up what Christ’s death and resurrection are about and everything the Church is about.

By giving his body to be eaten and his blood to be drunk, Jesus expressed the deepest truth about what he would do on the Cross. The Eucharist we celebrate tonight makes really present that very same body once offered on the Cross, then buried in the tomb, and now risen from the dead and seated at the right hand of the Father. The mystery of the Eucharist, which proclaims the death and resurrection of the Lord until he comes again, is at the very heart of the Church’s life. Whether amid the splendor of a papal basilica or in the simplicity of a missionary outpost, whether with the Bishop in his cathedral or with friends and neighbors in a local parish church, this same Lord’s Supper has been celebrated generation after generation and treasured by every generation as its precious inheritance. It is, as the old saying goes, the sacrament that makes the Church.

But Saint Paul’s account of the Lord’s Supper is also a challenge. For that earliest written account of what happened at the Last Supper was written not just to tell us a story. Paul was complaining. He was criticizing the Corinthians’ behavior, telling them that they were missing the point of the Lord’s Supper – receiving the Lord’s Body and Blood in an unworthy manner to their great peril. The four short verses we just heard from Paul’s letter are part of a longer text (which used to be read in its entirety at this Mass), which provides the context for Paul’s account. It highlights the Corinthians’ conflicts, dissensions, and factions – their unfortunate failure to be changed by the Eucharist, to be taken to someplace new, as Peter was at the Last Supper. 

Then as now, in 1st-century Corinth among those to whom St. Paul’s account of the Last Supper was originally addressed, all was not well in the Church. The social and class distinctions and inequalities, the ordinary life of Roman society, were making themselves felt within the Corinthian Church community, such that the community’s celebration of the Lord’s Supper still seemed to mirror those social and class distinctions and inequalities. Paul wasn’t asking his hearers to pretend that the surrounding secular society no longer existed, but he did want them to understand that those distinctions, those things that matter so much in the secular world, have no significance whatever within the community of Christ’s body, in which Jesus’ sacrificial death has transformed not only our individual relationship with him but our relationship with one another. Perhaps the Corinthians couldn’t quite help bringing the world with them to Mass, any more than we can. That’s why what happens here is so important, enabling us to leave here different from how we came, enabling us to bring something new to the world, something new and different from the same old stuff we brought with us from the world.

Back at the Last Supper, in the scene that follows next in John’s Gospel, Satan is said to have entered Judas, who, then, after taking a morsel of food from Jesus, left the Supper. How many times in his merely one year as Pope has Pope Francis warned us about the Devil. “Look out because the devil is present! The devil is here,” he reminded us again in one of his recent morning homilies.

Judas could have used that reminder. Instead, we are told, he went out into the night – leaving behind Jesus and his disciples, the community that could have been his, in order to commit himself instead to Satan’s cause.

What was that morsel of food Judas received from Jesus? Was it the Eucharist? What a warning there is in that!

So too, for us now, at the Lord’s Supper, how we depart from here may matter more than how we arrive. What kind of community have we become, thanks to the Lord’s Supper? Whose cause are we committed to? How have we become new people? What are we taking with us from here to transform this tired old world?

Homily for the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, Holy Thursday, April 17, 2014.