West Coast Easter

For the first time in my now rather long life, I have been spending the Easter Triduum on the West Coast, in San Francisco. (Of my 75 Easters, eleven were celebrated in Knoxville, TN, five in New Jersey as a grad student, four in Washington, DC, as a seminarian, an earlier four in Wisconsin when I was a political science professor, two in Grand Rapids, MI, as a deacon, one in Morgantown, WV, as a novice, and all the rest in New York.) 

I am just old enough to remember Easter before Pope Pius XII "restored" the order of Holy Week, when the liturgical services were still all early in the morning. I can remember as a young child once attending the Mass and procession on Holy Thursday morning and then the joyful moment at noon on Holy Saturday when Lent ended and we happily ate our first Easter eggs. Pius XII's "restored" order of Holy Week encouraged my adolescent liturgical enthusiasm through the excitement of going to Mass at night (an extreme rarity in those days) and the superb drama of the pre-conciliar Easter Vigil, which was then still a real vigil followed by the ringing of the bells, the playing of the hitherto silent organ, and Mass. Those ancient rites have since been reformed and "creatively" adapted (in some cases almost beyond recognition). The ancient Easter Vigil is now just an extra long Mass. So, while I still love the Exsultet and the ringing of the bells, now that I am no longer a pastor with liturgical obligations I am quite content to miss the rest of it.

Even now, however, few experiences still inspire me more than the procession on Holy Thursday night, a Mass which functions as a sort of First Vespers for the first day of the Easter Triduum, a day which ends with the Liturgy of the Lord's Passion in the late afternoon on Good Friday. Walking through the aisles and nave of a still beautiful, mid-19th-century church this past Thursday evening, I gave thanks for the permanently abiding eucharistic presence of the Risen Christ and for my own experience of a priesthood inseparable from that presence.

Regarding Good Friday itself, I found inspiration in a written reflection in the local parish bulletin, composed by my former Assistant Novice Master, who is celebrating his Golden Jubilee of priesthood this year: "The spiritual challenge of our older years is to accept the losses small and great with patience and good humor. ... When we're older, we may not be well enough to attend church, we may not hear well enough to talk with our friends over the phone, but we can still pray for our friends, and we believe those 'Good Friday' prayers offered though our pain and tears have powerful effect."

The way the Triduum is supposed to work, we are meant to go from the overcharged liturgical and devotional activity of the Triduum's first day to the relative inactivity and silence of Holy Saturday. This is reflected in the opening paragraph of the famous ancient Holy Saturday homily on Christ's descent to the underworld, which we read in today's Office: "Today there is a great silence over the earth, a great silence, and stillness, a great silence because the King sleeps; the earth was in terror and was still, because God slept in the flesh and raised up those who were sleeping from the ages. God has died in the flesh, and the underworld has trembled."

In complete contradiction to the nature of Holy Saturday, however, this supposedly still middle day of the Triduum is frequently a day of paradoxically frenzied activity in most parishes, as the grandiose decorating that used to take place after the Easter Vigil has now been anticipated beforehand. Now that what is supposed to be a day of profound silence and stillness has become a busy day of over-the-top horticultural display, we are paradoxically back where we were when the Easter Vigil was celebrated early Saturday morning and the rest of Saturday took on the inexplicably anticipated appearance of an early Easter.

But I am (regretfully) no longer a parish priest, and so I need no longer wrestle with the ambiguities of the Triduum's middle day. I am again free to focus - like most ordinary Christians - on the third and grandest day of the Triduum. Like the multitudes that throng the churches (some of them seldom on most other Sundays), I look forward to the best attended and most inspiring service of the Triduum - Easter morning Mass.

Photo: Good Friday, April 7, 2023, Old Saint Mary's Cathedral, San Francisco.

Good Friday

 

It’s Good Friday, that so paradoxically named day, the first of three days (beginning at sunset yesterday and ending at sunset on Sunday) when, united with Christians of every time and place, we contemplate Christ crucified, buried, and risen. This is the Passover of the Lord.

 

The unique story of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection is intimately wrapped up with the ancient story of the Lord’s Passover. As John's Gospel reminds us, Jesus died on the afternoon before the beginning of Passover, even as the Passover lambs were being sacrificed in the Temple, and was hastily buried because the festival was about to begin. His accusers would not enter Pilate’s headquarters in order not to be defiled so that they could eat the Passover.

 

Passover celebrates the most important event in ancient Israel’s history – not just as something interesting that happened, once upon a time, but as something powerfully real and meaningful in the present, and as a sign of hope for the future. In the challenging words of the Passover ritual: In every generation let all look on themselves as having personally come forth from Egypt. … It was not only our ancestors, blessed be He, that the Holy One redeemed, but us as well did he redeem along with them. … In every generation they stand up against us to destroy us, and the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hand.

 

At the exodus, the blood of the lamb marked the doors of the houses of God’s People in Egypt. In Jesus' time, the blood of the lamb was sprinkled on the altar of the Temple in Jerusalem. Now, however, now that the great high priest, Jesus, has passed through the heavens, the blood of the lamb has been shed, once and for all, on the altar of the cross – our doorway to salvation.

 

Marked by the blood that saves us all, the cross has thus become the Church’s door.  The cross is now, thanks to this day, our gateway to freedom and new life, and so a triumphant sign of glory for us and for all.

 

Of course, in the citadels of imperial power and our postmodern popular secular culture (so like the imperial governor Pontius Pilate in the caustic skepticism that simply dismisses the disconcerting possibility of something so definite and restricting as truth), the cross can only seem an ugly, nonsensical failure - what Saint Paul famously called a scandal and a stumbling block. But the paradoxical power of the cross is that Christ’s true triumph lay precisely not in his dramatically descending from the cross, as if he were some celebrity or actor, but in ascending the cross as a condemned criminal, one of many throughout humanity's long and tortured history – a paradox succinctly summarized by the prophet Isaiah: he was cut off from the land of the living, and smitten for the sin of his people … But … the will of the Lord shall be accomplished through him … and he shall take away the sins of many, and win pardon for their offenses.

 

It was this strangely paradoxical text that, not so many years after the events we commemorate today, an Ethiopian court official was reading and struggling to understand, when he encountered the evangelist Philip and asked him: I beg you, about whom is the prophet saying this? Philip, Luke tells us in the Acts of the Apostles, opened his mouth and, beginning with this scripture passage, he proclaimed Jesus to him. With Philip, the unanimous witness of authentic Christian tradition has recognized - in Jesus crucified, buried, and risen - the one who perfectly fulfills the prophet’s paradoxical words.

As the thrust of the soldier’s lance into Jesus’ side certified, Jesus really died on the cross. Then, bound with burial cloths according to the custom, his body was buried – all of which should then have been the end of the story. Were that the case, of course, we would hardly remember the events we commemorate today. We would hardly remember, let alone mourn, Jesus himself. 

 

But in fact we do remember, although we do not mourn. Today, instead of mourning, we celebrate the cross of Christ.

 

As St. John Chrysostom expressed it, so many centuries ago: Before, the cross was synonymous with condemnation; now it is an object of honor. Before, a symbol of death; now the means of salvation. It has been the source of countless blessings for us: it has delivered us from error, it has shone on us when we were in darkness. We were vanquished, yet it reconciles us with God. We were foes, yet it has regained God’s friendship for us. We were estranged, yet it has brought us back to him.

 

That is why today, in monumental basilicas and soaring cathedrals and tiny churches and rural missions, we will everywhere solemnly salute the wood of the cross, on which hung the salvation of the world. In every generation, we too must look upon the cross of Christ and embrace it. So let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and to find help in our time of need.

 

Today, we will venerate the cross individually (imitating Mary, his mother standing by the cross of Jesus), for each one of us is challenged as a disciple to realign his or her life, to model one’s life on the mystery of Christ’s cross - despite the difficulties life seems to put in the way, despite the obstacles each individual sinner personally puts in the way. Today too, we will venerate the cross together as the community of Christ’s holy Church - born on the cross in the blood and water which flowed out from Jesus’ side as a sign of the Church’s sacramental life and mission - because it is together as Christ’s Church (united with Mary, the Mother of the Church) that we continue Christ’s life and mission, effectively extending the reach of his cross into the whole world.

 

Passing through life this way, standing by the cross of Jesus and reborn as his Church in his blood and water, we will ourselves become Passover doorways, through which the Risen Lord's gift of salvation will flow from his side to fill our entire world.

Tennessee's Disgrace

 

One would think, after three nine-year old students and three adult staff were murdered by a beneficiary of Tennessee's toxic gun culture, that it could hardly get worse. In the aftermath of last week's mass murder, however, three Democratic members of the Republican-run Tennessee state legislature - Rep. Justin Jones, D-Nashville, Rep. Justin J. Pearson, D-Memphis, and Rep. Gloria Johnson, D-Knoxville - spoke out and supported student protests on the House floor by demonstrators upset with Tennessee Republicans' refusal to act against our fatal epidemic of gun violence. As a result, two of them, the two Black representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, were expelled by Tennessee's Republican-controlled legislature in a seven-hour session - Jones by a vote of 72 to 25, Pearson by a vote of 69 to 26, The third, Knoxville's white, female Representative Gloria Johnson, escaped expulsion by one vote short of the required two-thirds. During the debate leading to his expulsion, Rep. Jones said: “We called for you all to ban assault weapons and you respond with an assault on democracy.”

Holy Week

As a pastor, I always loved Holy Week. Of course, there was always that annual moment of panic, of worry whether the palms had arrived and if there were enough of them. (They always did, and there were always enough!) But, after that, there were few parish occasions more inspiring and unifying than the annual celebration of our basic story. Every day, I miss being a pastor - but never more so than in Holy Week.

"So, on Palm Sunday, with the chant of 'Hosanna filio David' we seem to enter another world," wrote 20th-century liturgical scholar Adrian Fortescue. "One would like to spend these days in something of the nature of a retreat," he continued. "That is not possible for most people. But at least, we should, as far as we can, leave behind our usual cares, at the threshold of Palm Sunday, to take them up again when we come out of the great days after Low Sunday."

I won't exactly be leaving behind my usual cares, much less pending these days on retreat. But - ever desirous of at least spending Holy Week in a parish - I will be traveling across the country to experience Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday in a parish. Then, after Easter morning Mass, I will be able to visit my nearby family for a holiday catch-up.

May this special week, when we recall the central story of our redemption be a time of renewal and blessing for the whole Church and for the whole world!

Image: Palm Sunday, The Roman Missal, Catholic Book Publishing Corp., NJ, 2011.

Alea Iacta Est

Those of us who went to school back when schools still taught serious subjects like history will all recognize the popular version of the words attributed by Roman historian Suetonius to Julius Cesar when Caesar led his army across the Rubicon river into Italy on January 10, 49 BC. Since he was doing so in defiance of the Senate and so starting a civil war, the expression alea iacta est (or,  alternately, iacta alea est, either way "the die is cast") has come to refer to passing a point of no return.

It seems like forever now since pundits have been prognosticating and pontificating about whether or not (and, if so, when) former President Trump might be indicted. I too have contributed my modest share to that tiresome discussion. That "Rubicon" has now been crossed, come what may.

As of now, it appears that Trump plans to come to New York to surrender sometime next week, probably on Tuesday. This now matters more than it might otherwise matter since Florida's mischievous Governor (so recently embarrassingly outsmarted by Mickey Mouse) has decided to defy Article IV, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution: A person charged in any state with treason, felony, or other crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another state, shall on demand of the executive authority of the state from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the state having jurisdiction of the crime. Who knew De Santis was a proponent of Florida's becoming such a "sanctuary state"?

De Santis' reaction is just the tip of the MAGA iceberg, a potentially Titanic-proportioned iceberg. We may be going down a potentially very dangerous path. The Manhattan DA will definitely need the self-confidence of Caesar himself! It will be a long time (if ever) before we can say (as was said by President Ford in 1974) "our long national nightmare is over."

It is, of course, quite possible in theory (if somewhat improbable in practice) that the case against Trump will play itself out somewhat calmly, resulting in an equally calm acquittal or conviction. More likely, however, this trial (assuming it actually goes to trial) will just further polarize our already hopelessly divided country. The precedent now having been set of a local DA of one political party bringing criminal charges against a former President (and presidential candidate) of the other party, we may perhaps imgine DAs in other places trying the same against President Biden after he leaves office and against other Democratic politicians and presidential candidates, thus conceivably continuing the sad cycle of political dysfunction and democratic decline. Talk about a "long national nightmare"!

That said, this could be the righteous reckoning our society so desperately needs right now with the harmful forces which have increasingly dominated our politics. My personal preference would have been for that reckoning to take a more properly political form - for Trump and MAGA world to be decisively defeated at the polls, which is how things ought to be resolved in a democratic republic, an outcome always preferable to reliance on an imperial judiciary instead of the political process to solve problems. One of the great advantages the Democrats have had in Joe Biden is that he seems to be one of the few who still really trusts the political process to defeat Trump, and he may yet be the one to do so decisively.

But back to indictment-world, my guess is that this further solidifies Trump's hold over the MAGA community in particular and the Republican party in general. One of the curious characteristics of culture-warriors (in religion as in politics) is that it seems to be the conflict itself that energizes them. What culture-warriors apparently care most about is fighting the good fight against enemies they deem to be irremediably evil. That and an obsessive sense of victimhood. (Many years ago, in a completely different context, I once asked an acquaintance to explain why certain people perceived themselves - or, at least, constantly presented themselves - as victims of others' supposed hostility. His answer was that presenting oneself as a victim in that way justifies their hostility to others and their attempts to oppress those others if given an opportunity to do so. That seems to explain well our contemporary culture-warriors - in religion as in politics.)

To his miserable MAGA world, Trump is the offended victim who heroically "fights" back, who perfectly personifies MAGA world's perversely self-invented sense of victimhood and desire for a strongman (or a "King Cyrus") to "fight" on their behalf.

We need no indictment to confirm what a horrendously terrible president Trump was. What it does do is add to our appreciation of just how destructive of our political order his supporters actually are.