The Easter Triduum, AKA the Sacred Three Days of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, is full of symbols and rituals that engage the senses. Every sense is involved. We can see, taste, smell, feel, and hear the liturgy.
Our sense of sight awakens as the glistening oils are brought in procession during the first minutes of the Holy Thursday liturgy celebrating the Lord’s Supper. We hear the joyous ringing of bells during the Glory to God and the splashing of water at the washing of the feet. We taste the consecrated bread and become what we eat—the Body of Christ. We smell the incense as the Blessed Sacrament is brought to the Altar of Repose. We feel the mood of solemnity as we leave in silence, preparing our senses for the contrasting sensory experience of emptiness and subdued starkness on Good Friday.
The same darkness begins the Easter Vigil, but soon we thrill to the leaping Easter fire. This “liturgy of liturgies” is a veritable feast for the senses. The lights are bright, the candle flames warm, the music boisterous, the excitement of the newly baptized contagious, the lilies pungent.
Spend time now planning for Holy Week so that you will be able to attend all three services. Everything else should cease. Cook, clean, and decorate as much as possible before Holy Thursday.
When your closest friends and relatives invite you to a feast, will you attend? Where else would you want to be? If your closest friend or family member is dying, will you stay with them? Where else would you be? If your closest friends and family members celebrate a victory, wouldn’t you celebrate with them? Where else would you be? Our God invites us to the Sacred Triduum. Where else would you be?
A driver used her GPS to find her destination. Unfortunately, the GPS remained silent. Left to her own sense of direction, the driver found her destination. Slowing the car to park at her desired spot, she heard the GPS exclaim gleefully, “You are here!”
April has arrived. No fooling! Suddenly we find ourselves “here.” March alternated between lamb and lion. Lent is half over with its recent “Laetare!” We stare at the calendar and wonder, “How did we get here?” Yes, we are here! If our Lenten resolve has wavered, we have two weeks to renew our efforts. Take stock of where you are. No matter how you might feel about yourself, know that you are “here” standing in God’s unconditional love.
The prophet Isaiah puts these words in the mouth of God: “For I create Jerusalem to be a joy, and its people to be a delight.” God would have felt the same when we were created—and everyone else was created. Yes, God made the person who annoys us a joy. God made the ones who make life difficult a delight. Everyone came into this world fully loved and delighted in by the Creator, a bundle full of newly created joy and delight.
If your Lenten resolution is becoming routine, if you want to make today a bit more challenging, try to see every person as a joy and delight.
On any day of the year I can find dust or spots to clean, so why do I wait for spring cleaning? It must be the sunshine that gets me in the mood, yet it’s the sunshine that reveals the most dust motes. I’d save time cleaning if I waited for a dark day. Yet spring cleaning must be something genetic or at least so much of the English-speaking world that Webster’s dictionary includes the hyphenated word “spring-cleaning.” Webster claims spring-cleaning must be “thorough.” This brings up another interesting use of the word “thorough.” Have you ever used “thorough” as a verb? I have, as in “I need to thorough the dining room.” (I think this is a Sister of Notre Dame idiom. You’ll never find it in Webster as a verb.) When you read this, we may have had our official first day of spring. I believe the equinox lands on a Sunday. Yeah! It’s a day of rest! Spring cleaning can wait.
Right around Ash Wednesday my youngest sister introduced me to Wordle. Because she plays it daily, I thought I would join her. After all, it’s a sisterly thing to do and a great way to keep in touch. She’s quite good at it, but she doesn’t brag. Instead, she sends an “innocuous” sentence that has no obvious reference to her word dexterity. But I already know the sun is “splendid” and Zelensky’s leadership is “impressive” and occasionally work makes me say “phew.” While I don’t allow myself too many minutes to arrange the yellow and green letters, I keep at it long enough to come close to my sister’s score. And then I send my own “innocuous” message.
Should I give up Wordle for Lent? Well, National Catholic Reporter recently had an article in the March 4-17 issue titled “Wordle Reminds Us that Pleasure Has its Place, Waiting Has Its Benefits.” The author spoke of the patience and temperance required to wait another day to play again. Self-control is certainly a good thing, a worthy Lenten practice. Need I say that it’s easier to practice Meatless Mondays than Wordle-less Wednesdays?
Oxymorons are fun. Who has not been “clearly misunderstood”? Who has not tasted something “awfully good”? Matching oxymorons with Lent may be “true fiction.” But let me remind you that the most significant oxymoron, the one on which we base our faith and our eternal salvation is “life-giving death.”
The Paschal Mystery—Christ’s death and resurrection—is Lent’s theme, its purpose, its culmination. Ash Wednesday begins with a “crash landing” of purple and deserts and no snacks. We wonder if losing weight is the reason we forego sweets, and we realize that that’s a “definite maybe.” If we search our hearts, we “find missing” the period of prayer that should be included in our daily schedules, and so we resolve with “optimistic pessimism” to attend weekly Stations. The Passion Narrative read year after year may be “old news,” but it’s still the supreme Good News. We join our voices with the “small crowd” yelling “Hosanna!” Then there’s the “deafening silence” of the sealed tomb. The ending of Lent’s journey is an “open secret.” We all know that Christ’s victory on the first Easter Sunday is our victory too. Although a “bittersweet” time, the forty days that we try to follow Our Lord more closely help us to die to ourselves to live for God.
We’ve all had the opportunity to ask ourselves, “Now what should I do?” Perhaps it was a time of transition like job loss or retirement. Maybe the question followed a problem. In the well-known gospel story, we hear a rich young man ask, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? I’ve already kept all the commandments.” As we begin Lent, we ask with the rich young man, “Now what should I do?” Jesus’ response to the rich young man answers our Lenten dilemma. “Come, follow me.”
What does “Come, follow me” mean for us?
“Oh, the possibilities!” sounds like a phrase from a Dr. Seuss book. But it also characterizes who we will be in heaven. Maria von Trapp wrote: “We shall remain the individuals we have been here on earth, but the possibilities which were created into us shall now find fulfillment.” We have a lifetime to reach our full potential, but I imagine that we all fall a bit short. The super athlete who misses the gold. The novelist whose works never made it to Oprah’s book club list. The contestant who lost on Jeopardy. The parents who feel they could have done more for their children. Those who lost jobs through no fault of their own. We may have time before our deaths to reflect on the “incompletes” in our lives. Yet we hope that God’s face will shine on us and bring to completion all that God intended when God created us. I’m looking forward to the possibilities.
My dad bent steel with mathematical precision for the amusement park rides at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio. That was his full-time employment, yet I tended to think of him as a farmer. While I never went into the steel factory, I could see him daily working in the fields or barn of our small farm, feeding the cattle, harvesting the crops.
Six miles from our farm was the Sorrowful Mother Shrine in Bellevue, Ohio. Our family often went there for Mass or devotions. When walking through the woods to pray the rosary, I would see the Stations of the Cross and an occasional statue. Having moved from home over 50 years ago, I see several additions to the Shrine’s devotional sites. One that I find most fitting is the addition of St. Isidore and his wife Maria. The shrine was designed with the rustic look of a barn, complete with some farm tools. Simple farmers have a place in the roll call of the saints. The saying “Close to the sod, close to God” apparently is true. Certainly, it was true for my dad.
It is my privilege to write our sisters’ obituaries. Fortunately, I am supplied with many statistics: names of family members, dates of birth and religious profession, years and places in active ministry, and perhaps a newspaper article or two announcing achievements or awards. Invariably I am surprised by the information I never knew about the Sister. I may have known her as a teacher, but sitting in a classroom rarely affords me insight into her hobbies and talents. If I never lived with the sister, I can’t appreciate her personality or witness her idiosyncrasies or learn she is a master of quick puns. Each sister is so much more than I think she is. Maybe you and I are so much more than we think we are, too.