April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
HOLY WEEK
Try the Triduum
German Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper said that out of our ability to shout a resounding "yes" to creation, to affirm the goodness of the cosmos, to embrace the length and breadth of our experience in this world, arises the human capacity for festivity.
Saying "yes" to all of life is the sustaining source of festivity, said liturgist and theologian Nathan Mitchell in "Blessed Pentecost." The sacred paschal Triduum - the three days of passover from death to life, rooted in the fast of Lent and overflowing into the 50 days of Easter - calls us to embrace and affirm life in one continual dance of descent and rising.
Jesus is "lifted up" on the cross, as was the healing bronze serpent in the desert...to descend into death and hell, like Jonah in the belly of the beast...to sleep the sleep of death, rising like the phoenix, allowing Spirit-fire to eternally descend - a descent through which the world is in continual transformation as a new creation, that we might rise from sin to new life.
To keep festival is for Church to be mother, to be that woman crowned with the cosmos (Rev 15) - laboring to push forth new life. St. Paul writes: "All creation is groaning in labor pains even until now...we...groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies" (Rom 8:22-23).
This, Josef Pieper remarked, is to say a resounding "yes" to life and goodness! Every birth is a confirmation that life is good. But every birth entails a dying. The introduction in the third edition of the Roman Missal opens, "In the sacred Triduum, [we celebrate] the greatest mysteries of our redemption, keeping the memorial of the Lord, crucified, buried, and risen."
The context for this festival is set by the entrance antiphon from Paul's letter to the Galatians for the Lord's supper at the evening Mass: "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" (Gal 6:14).
At the center of these days is the cross, where humanity and divinity converge. At the center of these days is Jesus Christ. As Jesus handed over His life to the mystery of sin and death in the Passion and cross, we are invited to hand over ourselves to Jesus Christ, to fall into His arms and experience life and salvation.
We are invited, as Jesus did with His persecutors, to "give in" to the rites of the Triduum. Festivity invites us to experience a shower of melodies; of quotidian actions - washing, walking, table-setting, sitting around a campfire, eating and drinking, anointing - raised to a depth of meaning beyond themselves.
There are the movements of processing; of darkness dancing with candlelight and incense; the scent of lilies, roses, chrism, geraniums, frankincense and beeswax; and the hearing of age-old stories settling into memory and hope. When we keep festival, past, present and future converge at the cross and we say "yes!"
We may want to ask, with Nathan Mitchell, "What really do the liturgies of the Triduum celebrate? Most all of us believe we know the answer. We assume that Thursday [evening] commemorates the day Jesus instituted the Eucharist; Friday commemorates the day He was executed on the cross; and the vigil commemorates His emergence from the tomb.
"These Triduum days were and may continue in the minds of many Catholics to be experienced as 'dramatic reenactments' of events which happened during Jesus' last days and culminated in His victory over death."
Prior to the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, we understood the Mass as a dramatic reenactment. Examples included the priest's approach to the altar, as Christ to the Mount of Olives; the kissing of the altar, as Judas' betrayal with a kiss; and the washing of the hands, as Pilate washed his hands and declared Jesus innocent.
Many hymns, such as, "Were You There When They Crucified My Lord," and devotions such as the building of a tomb and keeping a night watch or the use of a full-size cross on Good Friday, reinforce the historical idea of the Triduum. But is history the central focus during the Triduum?
Early Christian creeds anchored belief in the historical circumstances of Jesus' suffering and crucifixion "under Pontius Pilate." Jesus' life, career and death were attached to a specific time and place: a remote province of the Roman Empire at a time of sociopolitical transition.
Mitchell states that, because these events are historical, they cannot be "reenacted." What the paschal Triduum celebrates is mystery, not history. The liturgies of these days celebrate not what happened to Jesus, but what is now happening among us as a people called to conversion, gathered in faith and gifted with the Spirit of holiness. They celebrate God's taking possession of our hearts, recreating us as a new human community broken like bread for the world's life.
A principle on Holy Thursday, stated in the U.S. bishops' Newsletter of the Committee on the Liturgy, can be extended to the Triduum: "The rite of washing feet should be seen as more than a mime....It is a rite in which the true nature of Christian love and discipleship is revealed."
Christian festivity is a time of awareness and memory - what we call "anamnesis," a making-present which allows us to enter into the mystery.
Thomas Merton speaks of "sacred time" as primordial. He writes that whenever the Gospel is sung in the liturgy, it in effect destroys the passage of time; in the liturgy, the past salvific events of Christ are the "now" of the Church's prayer.
The Church takes seriously the "todays" of the liturgy, which destroy time. We first experience that in the synagogue scene of Luke's Gospel: Jesus "came to Nazareth, and went according to His custom into the synagogue on the sabbath day. He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah.
"He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written: 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.'
"He said to them, 'Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing'" (Lk 4:16-21).
We sang in the responsorial psalm of the Christmas liturgy at night the words of the Gospel, "Today is born our Savior, Christ the Lord;" and on Holy Thursday evening, "On the day before He was to suffer - that is today."
The past collides with our present. Each of us will experience these mysteries through deaths and risings in our lives: a divorce; waiting helplessly for employment or a lover; the death of a loved one; caring for a parent; the birth of a child; the death of our dreams; letting go of a child to college, marriage or addiction; the return of a daughter or son from the military; the experience of loneliness.
Our present is embraced by Jesus' salvific past in a transfigured dance into the future. Yet how do we say "yes" in a culture that wants to keep saying "no" to life? What does it mean to say "yes" to life in the midst of the economic crisis when many are losing employment...in the midst of war, the Arab Spring, the bombing of Coptic, Chaldean and Assyrian Churches...in the midst of drug cartel violence in Mexico and Central America...in the midst of a mud-slinging presidential campaign...in the midst of abortion, famine, divorce, and abuse...in the midst of polarization, anger and displacement within the Catholic community over issues of divorced and separated Catholics, homosexual Catholics, church closings, the Roman Missal, the role of women, authority in the Church and labeling of positions and people as conservatives or liberal?
Do we have the capacity to "keep festival?" When I experience, Christmas evening, the exhausted comment of, "Thank God, Christmas is over," I wonder whether we have the capacity at this time to keep festival.
When the first question among clergy and musicians Easter Week is, "How long did your vigil last?" I wonder whether we have the capacity at this time to keep festival.
When we displace civic "holy days" - Memorial Day, the birthdays of Martin Luther King Jr., George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, for example - in favor of convenient Mondays, allowing for sales and leisure, I wonder whether we have the capacity at this time to keep festival.
The enemies of festival are prominent: the keeping of time, convenience and the absence of play. When you are with someone or doing an activity you enjoy, are you cognizant of time? Isn't time, as Thomas Merton teaches, destroyed?
What of play? My example is always the throwing of a Frisbee between friends: People are running, jumping, chasing, laughing and outrunning the stray dog who has joined in, with no score to keep. Is this not the essence of a resounding "yes" to life?
Liturgy at its best is sacred play, a sacred wasting of time with God. If you still do not understand, speak to two people who are in love. The Triduum and the 50 Days of Easter "offer an invitation to explore more deeply the heart, to awaken our memory of God's presence and power in our lives, to look more closely at all the rich and varied textures of creation," Mitchell says. What is the attitude with which you approach our holy days and seasons?
The sacred paschal Triduum is unique in our Catholic tradition: one liturgy over three days. Lent ends at sunset on Holy Thursday. The Triduum begins with Holy Thursday's Mass of the Lord's supper and concludes with Paschal Vespers on Easter Sunday.
The evening Mass of the Lord's supper begins with a procession and introductory rites, but has no dismissal rite, as the community leaves in prayerful silence. The celebration of the Lord's Passion has no introductory rites and no dismissal. At the Easter Vigil, the community gathers around the fire, concluding with a wonderful double-alleluia dismissal and formal recessional.
The Triduum is also the final stage of purification and enlightenment for the elect, those joining the Church, as they approach the Easter sacraments. The Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults is instructive for the whole community on how we should enter into the Triduum: "On Holy Saturday, when the elect refrain from work and spend their time in recollection."
How might you reclaim a sense of festivity? If you have not participated in the Triduum, might you consider attending this year? What decisions need to be made to clear your calendar to put aside these three days of death, sleep and rising in the Lord?
(Father Mickiewicz is pastor of St. Mary's parish in Oneonta and sacramental minister of Holy Cross in Morris.)[[In-content Ad]]
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