Fast Forward

Back in the 1990s, when I was serving as a deacon in New York, a colleague, who has since passed on to his eternal reward, drew upon the then common technology of the videocassette recorder to refer to Jesus' resurrection as a fast forward. That complemented another then popular image of the resurrection as the effect of the future upon the present. All such analogies are attempts to use ordinary language to describe the totally out of the ordinary happening we call Christ's resurrection, the unique and definitive experience which enables us to say that Jesus is, instead of Jesus was.

To appreciate the uniqueness of Christ's resurrection one need only compare the gospel accounts of the events surrounding the resurrection with the same gospels' accounts of the raising of Jairus' daughter (Mark 5:22-43), the widow's son (Luke 7:11-17), and Lazarus (John 11:1-44). Those were amazing occurrences, to be sure, which overjoyed and inspired those who witnessed them. They were well beyond normal expectations, given the medical technology available at the time. But they could be recounted clearly and comprehensively. As miraculous happenings or "signs," they filled those present with hope that God was making his presence manifest among his people in an extraordinary way, which would somehow be of even wider benefit beyond the temporary extension of ordinary human life for one particular 12-year old girl, one particular young man, and one particular family friend of Jesus. That's saying a lot, of course. But those events were not saying fast forward. They were a wonderful prolongation of the present, but they hardly represented the effect of the future upon the present.

In contrast, the gospels accounts of Jesus's resurrection - or rather of the experiences of these who were made aware of it - reflect the disciples' confusion and anxiety about something both unexpected and apparently unintelligible to them at first. Besides reflecting the really unique and mysterious character of the event, these reactions do us the favor of allowing us to share in the disciples' experience from our own as yet seemingly un-futured present.

It is one thing to recognize as an abstract intellectual proposition that, of course, God - if God really exists as the Creator - can re-create something new, something unimaginably new and hence completely unexpected. It is something else, however, to experience that directly or be confronted by that personally, and try to comprehend its significance. That was the challenge which faced the disciples, who not only had to discover finally what Jesus' resurrection from the dead meant for him but what it meant for them and what it means for us - and then spread the good news to all the world.

Tomorrow, the Church will triumphantly proclaim how Peter and the Beloved Disciple ran to the tomb out of curiosity on the basis of Mary Magdalene's confusingly incomplete report. That familiar Gospel reading [John 20:1-9] assures us both that the Beloved Disciple saw and believed, and that they did not yet understand the scripture that he had to rise from the dead.

Whatever its present effects, the future remains the future and so cannot yet be completely understood. But we are able to see its effect and so come to belief. Easter invites us to put ourselves in the position of those disciples – unexpectedly (and excitedly) experiencing something surprisingly new in a world where everything else seems so ordinary and old. 

Like those original disciples, we are not all the same. Some like Mary Magdalene and the other women may come to the empty tomb in a spirit of devotion and a desire to be of service. Some like Peter and the Beloved Disciple may come out of curiosity and wonder. Some of us run fast, like the disciple whom Jesus loved. Others, beset by doubts or daily difficulties, run much more slowly, like Peter. But what matters most, the Gospel story seems to suggest, is that we get there - that we have come like those first disciples to that tomb that was supposed to stay forever closed and dark, but from which the stone has been removed, in order that we - and the world - may believe.

Trduum

 

In just a few more hours, the Church will begin the solemn three-day celebration officially known as the Sacred Paschal Triduum of the Death, Burial and Resurrection of the Lord, or simply the Triduum. The Pauline liturgy's Paschal Triduum of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (beginning the evening before with the Solemn Mass of the Lord's Supper on Thursday and concluding with Evening Prayer on Sunday) replaces the older medieval Sacred Triduum of Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (which began with Tenebrae on Wednesday afternoon/evening and concluded with  pro-Vespers at the end of the "Easter Vigil" celebrated on Saturday morning).

The Triduum reflects the likely more accurate Johannine chronology, according to which Jesus was crucified on Nisan 14, the Preparation Day before the Passover, which began at sundown after Jesus' burial. The traditional liturgy's reading of John's Passion on Good Friday, preceded by Exodus 12:1-11 highlighted the salvific symbolic significance of Christ's death on Preparation Day and his identification with the Paschal lamb. Chronologically, then, Jesus, knowing that his hour had come [John 13:1], that he would be already dead by the time of the Passover ands would in fact never again celebrate the old Passover, anticipated the festival with a uniquely new Christian reconfiguration of the ritual meal at the Last Supper which has since become the Lord's Supper.

Chronological considerations aside, the Triduum is more than an historical commemoration - much less a theatrical reenactment of the great drama, as Christ were not already risen and reigning at his Father's right hand and we were instead waiting for something new to happen on Easter Sunday. It is the Risen Christ we celebrate these days - as we do every day. It is the Risen Christ whom we will receive in the Eucharist tonight, not the historical Jesus at the Last Supper nor tomorrow the dead and buried Jesus of Good Friday. The Triduum is, of course, an invitation to contemplate Christ's death and burial before celebrating his resurrection in order to identify with his death and burial so as to enter fully into the benefits of his resurrection.

The Triduum is, finally, the ritual reception of Christ's revelation of who he is and, therefore, who God is. We commemorate the Incarnation at Christmas, but we experience its fuller meaning and relevance for us in this Triduum. For God, as Hebrews says, in these last days having now revealed himself to us by his Son, we now experience and understand in an altogether new way, which would hav been impossible apart from Jesus, who God is and how God is for us. As Romano Guardini wrote long ago in his famous work The Lord, "What Christ did, God did. What Christ suffered, God suffered.  The Father rejected not part of the life of his Son" [tr. Elinor Castendyk Briefs, Gateway, 1954].

We should glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom is our salvation, life, and resurrection, through whom we are saved and delivered [Entrance Antiphon, Mass of the Lord's Supper].

Photo: "Hewit Crucifix," Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, 2010.

76!

 

Another birthday!  

I'm now 76!!! 

At this particular point on life's trajectory, one has obviously only a very limited number of birthdays left. So it behooves one to cherish every one of them. After all, as Saint Augustine wrote in one of his letters:

As you look ahead in life you begin to realize that all of us are going to die someday. In your infancy you look forward to being a child. When you are a child you look forward to being a teenager. As a teen you look forward to being a young adult. In your days of young adulthood you look forward to being middle-aged. When you reach middle-age you look forward to old age. But when you finally get old you realize that there is nothing more to look forward to in this life. There is no age after old age (Ep. 213, 1).

That said, on one's 76th birthday one ought above all to be grateful - and certainly I am genuinely grateful -  for having lived this long, indeed for having lived at all, and for having lived so well, such an interesting, fulfilling, and in at least certain respects privileged life in this remarkable period of human history. I am grateful too to all those who have been a part of my life - living still or already dead - my parents and sisters and other family, friends and colleagues past and present, fellow Clergy and Religious, former parishioners in the places where I have been fortunate to serve. As Saint Augustine also said:

Signs of love coming from the hearts of friends shine through eyes and mouth and speech and thousands of gestures. They make one out of many, bringing hearts together like bundled kindling. (Confessions 4.18.13)

What a wonderfully uniquely complex journey it has been - and still continues to be! 

Palm Sunday

 

Pre-pandemic, Palm Sunday was one of the most popular days of the Christian year in terms of church attendance, and normally no pastor would ever want to be caught with an insufficient supply of palms to satisfy the earnest demand of the eager crowds. When I was a pastor, there was always that annual moment of worry whether the palms had arrived - and if there were enough of them. (They always did, and there were always enough!)

Even before the pandemic, however, a novel and rather disturbing trend had begun to appear, as some people left their palms in the church at the end of Mass instead of taking them home (a consequence, perhaps, of insufficient catechetical formation on sacramentals and on the apotropaic function of blessed palms). Another contemporary challenge to Palm Sunday's fullest celebration may come from an increasing tendency for people to arrive late for Mass. When many participants arrive during or even after the procession is over, what is the point of the procession? (In retrospect, the post-conciliar liturgy's relocation of the Blessing and Distribution of Ashes from the beginning of Mass to the middle, while liturgically illogical, has proved to be a great and wise pastoral success!) 

Palm Sunday is certainly about more than getting palms, but the palms have given the day its typical title at least since Saint Isidore in 7th-century Spain and Saint Bede in 8th-century England. One of the multiple misfortunes of the Pauline liturgical reform of Holy Week was renaming this Sunday, Passion Sunday (formerly the name of the previous Sunday). That renaming has not caught on - a very visible instance of liturgical non-reception. In any case, whatever the day's name, my personally favorite feature of Palm Sunday has always been singing the hymn Gloria Laus et Honor during the procession (its original 39 verses composed by Bishop Theodulph of Orleans in 818). It is a fantastically glorious hymn, well worth waiting once a year for. 

In contrast to the exuberance of the procession, however, the Roman Rite historically has long emphasized the memory of Christ's Passion and Death during the Mass, the centerpiece of which was traditionally the proclamation of the Passion According to Saint Matthew. (In the contemporary liturgy, instead of reading each of the four Passion accounts on a different day of Holy Week each year, the three synoptic Passion accounts are rotated on Palm Sunday. So, this year, the Passion reading will be from the Gospel according to Mark.)

In the traditional sung liturgy, the Passion reading acquired additional drama from its proclamation by three deacons, singing in three different tones - Christ's voice low and slow, the Narrator medium, and the third voice high and fast. (Originally, each of the deacons was also distinguished by the color of his stola latior - black for the deacon singing the words of Christ, white for the narrator, and red for the third voice.) Charlemagne's 9th-century successor, Louis the Pious, popularized the practice of kneeling briefly at the words emisit spiritum ("He gave up his spirit"), a popular practice which has somehow survived late-20th-century liturgical informality and ritual iconoclasm.

Ritual, by its nature, is inherently somewhat dramatic. . The great ceremonies of Holy Week are even extravagantly so They are intensely dramatic, emotionally affecting, over-the-top. They are extravagant in the best sense of the word. Not unlike Mary with her expensive perfumed oil (of which we will hear in the liturgy tomorrow), the Church practices a sort of holy excess in her worship this week. In this case, however, it is we who are the beneficiaries.

Outside of communities of Religious men and women and those commendable individuals and occasional congregations characterized by liturgical enthusiasm, most people's experience of Holy Week (apart from Easter Sunday itself) starts and ends on Palm Sunday. So it falls to today's celebration to tell the Holy Week story in an attractive and memorable way. That highlights its importance, for there is nothing more inspiring and undying than the Church's annual celebration of our basic story.

In his 2011 meditation on Palm Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI wrote: "The Church greets the Lord in the Holy Eucharist as the one who is coming now, the one who has entered into her midst. At the same time, she greets him as the one who continues to come, the one who leads us towards his coming. As pilgrims, we go up to him; he comes to us and takes us up with him in his 'ascent' to the Cross and Resurrection, to the definitive Jerusalem that is already growing in the midst of this world in the communion that unites us with his body."

Photo: A much younger version of me blessing palms in Toronto, ON,  in the late-1990s.

The World's Oldest Hatred

 

In the Jewish calendar, the festival of Purim is celebrated tonight and tomorrow. Purim is a holiday that commemorates the saving of the Jewish people from the genocidal Haman's plan to exterminate all the Jews living in the ancient Persian Empire in the 5th century B.C.. (How fittingly like Hamas Haman's name sounds!) According to the Book of Esther, the ur-anti-Semite Haman persuaded King Ahasuerus (possibly to be identified with the Persian Emperor Xerxes I) to kill all the Jews in his empire. But his plans were foiled by Mordecai and his adopted daughter Esther, who had previously providentially risen to become Queen of Persia. The day destined for the genocide became instead a day of deliverance and since then a day of feasting and rejoicing - a fun holiday with a seriously relevant message and a reminder of the world's perennially oldest hatred.

The Purim story highlights how hatred of Jews is even older than the Christianity that historically - and understandably so - has born the brunt of the blame for most of the anti-semitism that has poisoned western civilization for so many centuries. While remnants of that may still survive, anti-semitism is now widely in evidence especially on the secular post-religious left. (Of course, Marxism and its variants were themselves secularized versions of Christian eschatology. But very, very secularized!)

In the April Atlantic, Franklin Foer, in an article entitled "The Golden Age of American Jews Is Ending," describes the growing experience of American Jews' seemingly newfound recognition that the rising tide of anti-semitism in the U.S. is bringing to a close what he calls "an unprecedented period of safety and prosperity for Jewish Americans." Certainly the escalation of anti-semitism in the U.S. since the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel appears to have come as something of a surprise to many. 

Revealingly, one of those referenced in Foer's article is quoted as having "moved her family from Chicago to Berkeley six years earlier, hoping to find a community that shared her progressive values." Perhaps a little more mature reflection on some of those "progressive values" might have been in order, if not to avoid such a move then at least to accompany the move with an open-eyed perception of the persistence of the world's oldest hatred. The author himself admits to having "consoled myself with the thought that once Trump disappeared from the scene, the explosion of Jew hatred would recede. America would revert to its essential self: the most comfortable homeland in the Jewish diaspora."

"Among the brutal epiphanies of October 7," however, has been the author's recognition that "a disconcertingly large number of Israel’s critics on the left" do not "believe Jews had a right to a nation of their own."

There is, I believe, a particular pathology to left-wing anti-zionist anti-semitism. At any moment, there are wars and ethnic and racial violence going on all around the world, oppressions of various sorts from Africa to Tibet. Yet seldom do any of these conflicts result in, for example, local government agencies like the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board demanding a ceasefire! There seems to be something special about Jews defending themselves that somehow deeply offends certain "progressive" sensibilities.

In his article, Foer effectively depicts an important transformation which American culture has been experiencing:

"America’s ascendant political movements—MAGA on one side, the illiberal left on the other—would demolish the last pillars of the consensus that Jews helped establish. They regard concepts such as tolerance, fairness, meritocracy, and cosmopolitanism as pernicious shams. The Golden Age of American Jewry has given way to a golden age of conspiracy, reckless hyperbole, and political violence, all tendencies inimical to the democratic temperament. Extremist thought and mob behavior have never been good for Jews. And what’s bad for Jews, it can be argued, is bad for America."

Even now, after all that has been said and done by the anti-semitic left since October 7, some still want to suggest that there can be legitimate "anti-zionism" which is not anti-semitism. Of course, insofar as Israel acts as a state in the international order, its particular leaders are obviously fallible and its policies subject to analysis and legitimate critique. Witness, for example, Senate Majority Leader's laudable speech challenging Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's policies and indeed his long-term continuation in office, effectively calling for much needed regime change in Israel. But criticizing a particular politician and advocating a change in government is one thing. Rejecting the very concept of the Jewish state (in a way that few would reject the very concept of an American or British or French or German state) is a very different matter. As one correspondent quoted by NY Times columnist Michelle Goldberg on this issue expressed it, “Israel is the political entity through which the Jewish people exercises its natural right of self-determination and control over its own fate. How is singling out the Jewish people to deprive it of those rights not antisemitic?”

Photo: Esther Denouncing Haman (1888) by Ernest Normand (1857-1923)