Catholic World News : Vatican prods US bishops on liturgical translations
May. 22 (CWNews.com) – In a letter to the president of the US bishops' conference, the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship has strongly underlined the importance of proper translations for liturgical texts.
I sure hope Cardinal Arinze is doing a novena to the Holy Spirit on this one. I always thought someone could buy me the new translations as a retirement gift…
I realized this past week that this would be my last homily as a deacon. Time has certainly flown by, and next week I’ll be attending the Ordination of a friend in Texas, and the week after that is my turn. Since this is my last homily as a deacon, I am very happy that I get to preach on these particular readings, because they contain some of my favorite lines in all of Scripture. We could certainly spend hours delving into the theological meanings of all that we’re told today, but well, I wouldn’t do that to you in my last homily as a deacon!
The letter from St. John in today’s second reading has one of the most fundamental principles in all of theology: God is love. We all probably learned that somewhere early on in our religious education, and it probably filled us with warm feelings at the time. But we might also agree that the whole idea of “God is love” can be a little trite, the stuff of greeting cards and bumper stickers, perhaps it has become almost meaningless to we who have become jaded with the whole idea of what love is.
But the love that is God isn’t any of the things we think of when we think of love. This love isn’t a mere warm feeling for another person, it isn’t a synonym for “like,” it isn’t physical, emotional or intellectual love at all. The Greek word that is translated “love” here is agape – a word you may have heard – and maybe “love” isn’t even the best way to translate it, but that’s all that our English provides. Agape love is love that lives for and acts for another person; agape love is, as Jesus tells us in the Gospel, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
This is, after all, what Jesus did for us up there on that cross. The most perfect way that God could show God’s love for us is for His only begotten Son to be born among us, to suffer and die to pay the price for our sins, and to be raised up to new life that lasts forever so that the barriers of sin and death that had kept us from God’s love would be obliterated. This agape love is love that is not destroyed by sin nor limited by death; it is a love that is impossible to horde but must be given away; it is a love that does not let distinctions like race or religion or class or way of life divide us: it is a love that is as limitless as God is, because God Himself is that love.
This agape love that is God’s very essence is a love that completely transforms us. This love makes our salvation possible and once it has done that, it bursts forth from us to others in order to make their salvation possible too. Peter was transformed by this love in the first reading, and finally came to the realization that this love was not limited just to Jews but also must embrace the Gentile world as well.
Because God’s love transforms us, we are no longer slaves, as Jesus says, but now God’s friends. Our slavery to the passions and vices and limitations and longings of our flesh can all be transformed by God’s love into the kind of obedience that brings us true joy. God’s agape love forgives sin, heals brokenness, and raises us up to be God’s friends. God’s love sends us transformed lovers out to love others and to help them find friendship with God too. This love makes us sharers in the very love and life of God.
Because God’s love transforms us, we can do the thing that is not in our nature: we can lay down our lives for others. Just as Christ laid down his life on the cross, so we can give of ourselves, often at great cost, to raise children, to serve the poor, to care for the elderly and the infirm, to shelter the homeless and teach the young. All of the things that will never make us rich or famous but which will raise up another person in need are possible because of God’s transforming love.
When we’ve loved others in this way, and when we see them reach out to others in love, we know that God’s love continues to transform our world and continues to raise us up and make salvation possible for more and more people every day.
Having been transformed into God’s friends, we are commanded to love one another as we have been loved by God. God’s love came to us at the incredible price of the life of Jesus Christ, and loving one another will demand a great price from us as well. But we can be confident in our ability to lay down our very lives for others because we are being transformed daily by our God who is love itself.
Today's Office of Readings has as its second reading an excerpt from a Letter to Diognetus. This is one of my favorite readings. I'm not sure why, because every year when I read it, it makes me feel uneasy, unworthy — yeah, all of that. Listen to this portion of it:
Christians love those who hate them just as the soul loves the body and all its members despite the body's hatred. It is by the soul, enclosed within the body, that the body is held together, and similarly, it is by the Christians, detained in the world as in a prison, that the world is held together. The soul, though immortal, has a mortal dwelling place; and Christians also live for a time amidst perishable things, while awaiting the freedom from change and decay that will be theirs in heaven. As the soul benefits from the deprivation of food and drink, so Christians flourish under persecution. Such is the Christian’s lofty and divinely appointed function, from which he is not permitted to excuse himself.
That just reminds me that no, we're not home yet. We are supposed to live as full citizens of the world, but also as aliens in it — the whole Catholic both/and approach to theology in general. We must take our place here and make present the Kingdom of God on earth. But we must always live remembering that we are not ultimately destined for life in this world, and so must not be too attached to things, people, anything that drags us away from our Creator.
I remember back in my second year of seminary, I took my first moral theology class. One of the first tests we took had a line from the third Eucharistic Prayer on it: “Father, you are holy indeed, and all creation rightly gives you praise.” This line came along with the question: “Rocks are part of creation. So how does a rock give God praise?” The answer, we had been taught, is “by being a rock.” Certainly a rock could not sing a song of praise or pray a psalm, but just by being what it was intended to be—a rock—it gave God praise.
The implications of the question were that every part of creation gives God praise by being most fully what it was created to be. Trees give praise to God by bearing leaves, flowers and fruit; animals give praise to God by running, ruling the jungle, barking, flying or whatever it was they were given power to do. We then, are also created to give God praise by being most fully what we were created to be – by being fully human. This is what Jesus tells us at the end of today’s Gospel: “By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples” (John 15:8).
Being fully human might seem easy to do. But that, I think, is based on a flawed notion of what it means to be human. How many times have we all said something like, “sure, I am a sinner; I’m only human, right?” But being a sinner is not the same as being fully human. The most fully human person that ever walked the face of the earth was Jesus Christ. Jesus, we believe, was like us in all things, except sin. This is how we know that sin is not part of what it means to be fully human. And sin obviously is not something that gives God praise. Indeed, that last line of the Gospel seems to leave no room for sin, and sets a rather high standard of what it means to give God praise: that we must bear much fruit – not just some fruit, but much fruit – and become disciples of Jesus.
To become more fully human is a life-long task, and we know that it will never be fully realized this side of heaven. But while we are on earth, that’s our primary responsibility: to give God praise by becoming more fully what we were created to be in the first place. Today’s Gospel gives us a picture of how we’re supposed to do that. It mentions two specific things we are to do.
The first is to get pruned. We, the branches of Jesus’ vine are destined to be pruned so that we can bear more fruit. Now, a couple of weeks ago, I was pruning bushes at my parents’ house. While the bushes never said a word to me, I was guessing this pruning was not a painless process for them! It involves cutting away parts of the bush that looked for all the world like they were life-giving, and it involved cutting some branches radically away. All in the name of becoming a healthier shrub.
We too have to be pruned sometimes. And it’s not a painless process for us either: it involves maybe cutting away some parts of our lives that look for all the world like they are life-giving. But we recognize that these things can be really destructive: relationships that entangle us in ways that are not healthy, pleasures that lead to sin, habits that are not virtuous. However enjoyable these relationships or activities may seem to be, and however painful it may be to end them, end them we must in the name of pruning our lives to be healthier, to be more fully the people we were created to be.
I’ve done some pruning in my own life recently. And I can tell you it has indeed been painful. This past week, I moved out of my room at the seminary. It is a room that has served me well for the last four years, but, as one of our formators told us at our end-of-the-year Mass, “it’s time for you to go.” At the end of it, I took one last look around before I left and saw a room much cleaner than it had been in about a year! – but also much emptier. There was sadness, and I realized the sadness was not so much leaving the little but functional room, but that leaving it represented the sadness of leaving behind all the things the room been for me: the times I studied with my friends there for a test; the times we had met there for prayer or to discuss the Scriptures in our formation group; the times we had just hung out there, watching a movie, or wasting time together. Those activities and relationships had been life-giving to me for five years, and now it was time to go. I realize that as good as those relationships had been for me, it is time to let go and to move on to the priestly life God has been and is now calling me to live. This pruning is painful, but in doing so, I can become more fully the person God created me to be.
The second thing the Gospel calls us to do today is to remain in me. “Me,” of course, means Jesus, and just in case we don’t get the point, Jesus gives us that instruction four times. “Remain in me,” Jesus says, as the branch remains in the vine. “Remain in me,” Jesus says, so that you can bear much fruit. “Remain in me,” Jesus says, so that you will not wither and dry up only to be tossed out and burned as rubbish. “Remain in me,” Jesus says, so that whatever you truly need and want will be done, and so that you can bear much fruit and be my disciples.
I think we can all get on board with remaining in Jesus, because this reading makes it sound completely wonderful. And it is wonderful. If we want to be truly happy, if we want ultimate fulfillment in life, if we really want to be the wonderful creation God made us to be, we must remain in Jesus, because, as he says, “without me you can do nothing.” And that’s true. How many times have we tried to better ourselves and lost sight of the goal before we even started? How many times have we tried to stamp out a pattern of sin in our lives, only to fall victim to it time and time again? How many times have we tried to repair relationships only to have egos, hurts or resentments get in the way? When we forget to start our work with God’s help, we are destined to fail. Apart from Jesus we can do nothing. Well does he advise us to remain in him.
But what does “remain in me” mean? How do we do that? Is there a blueprint or some steps we can follow to make sure we’re remaining? Unfortunately, we don’t get any of that in today’s Scripture. We are told that because we’ve had the word preached to us, we are “already pruned” and are on the way to remaining in him. But this remaining, much like the seasonal pruning, is not a once-and-for-all thing. We have to check our growth daily, we have to examine where we are remaining every day. That might start with Sunday Mass attendance, and perhaps move on to daily Mass, praying devotions like the Rosary, reading Scripture every day, and taking time at the end of the day to see whether we’ve been part of the vine, or are in danger of breaking away from it.
Remaining in Jesus is different for every person. We’ve all been called to remain in him in different ways. Some are called to remain in Jesus in the context of married and family life. Others are called to remain in Jesus by living life as a priest, deacon, or religious brother or sister. Others remain in Jesus by chastely living as single men and women. Each of these ways of remaining in
Jesus has a different style of prayer and embraces different acts of charity and service and relationships with others. All of them are ways of remaining part of the vine, but they all must have that seasonal pruning and that daily examination that guides them back to the vine day in and day out.
On this Mother’s Day, I am particularly struck by the spiritual example of my mother and my grandmothers. These women have been faithful witnesses to the Gospel for me and have always encouraged me to live the most fully human life I possibly could. They encouraged me to become all that God had created me to be, and if not for their witness and their urging, I know I would not be standing here today. One of the many gifts God gives us in this life to encourage us in the very hard work of pruning and remaining is the gift of those who have been mother to us. These might have been our natural mothers and grandmothers, our godmothers, our aunts or sisters or some other nurturing female presence in our lives. For all of them today, let us give thanks, and praise our God for the ways they have helped us to be what God created us to be.
All creation, as Eucharistic Prayer III tells us, rightly gives God praise. But we aren’t rocks. It’s not so easy for us to be most fully the wonderful human creation we were made to be. But that, brothers and sisters in Christ, is our calling and our joy. May we all support one another in our times of pruning and through our journey of remaining. Encouraged by one another, we can all sing together with the psalmist, “I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people” (Psalm 22:26a).
Two weeks ago today, we celebrated Easter, the great feast of our salvation, when Christ rose victorious over sin and death. Today, two weeks later, the question is, so now what?
In today’s Liturgy of the Word, three different audiences hear the same message. In the first reading, Peter is speaking to a Jewish audience. This audience has just witnessed Peter and John stopping at the Temple Gate to cure a crippled man in the Name of Jesus. These folks were used to seeing the man crippled, and for them, in that culture, at that time, being crippled meant that his life was steeped in sin. So seeing the man cured meant also that his sins were wiped away. The reading we have from Acts today follows that story and in it, Peter teaches that audience about the meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection and exhorts them to repent and be converted, in order that their sins, too, might be wiped away.
In the second reading, John is writing to his community, obviously an audience of Christians. In that letter, John exhorts the community to avoid committing sin and to keep God’s commandments. But because he knows that we are all weak human beings, he knows that sin happens, and so he encourages them by reminding them of Jesus Christ the righteous one, who is our expiation, who wipes away sin.
In the Gospel, the audience is the disciples. Jesus enters their midst and they are terrified, thinking they’ve seen a ghost. After inviting them to touch him and after eating some cooked fish to let them know that he is not a ghost, but a real person, Jesus opens their minds so that they can understand all of the Scriptures that prophesied about his life and ministry. He then encourages them to go out and preach repentance so that people’s sins might be wiped away.
It almost sounds like a Lenten message, doesn’t it? All of the readings speak of sin. But the difference here is that all of the readings speak of sin wiped away. And all of the readings speak of that wiping away coming about through the death and resurrection of Jesus. Through this beautiful Paschal Mystery, the blackboards of our lives are wiped clean so that a new story, free from the effects of sin and death, can be written about us in the Name of Jesus Christ.
Let’s take a show of hands: how many of you gave something up for Lent, or did some act of charity or service, or gave money to the poor, or spent more time in prayer or prayed a different way during Lent? That’s great; those penitential practices helped to prepare us for the joy of Easter. During Easter, though, we quite rightly replace all the penance and fasting with joy and feasting. So maybe we’ve all given up those practices of fasting, almsgiving and prayer that we started during Lent. I know that, in many ways, I have.
But maybe we shouldn’t give up reforming our lives for Easter. Because the so now what? of Easter is that we truly believe things have really changed. We believe that Jesus Christ died a cruel death and rose gloriously triumphant over that death. We believe that His death and resurrection repaired our broken relationship with God and allowed us to experience the joy of salvation. We believe that the Paschal Mystery is what makes it possible for us to live one day with God in heaven. None of that was possible before Easter.
So I think we should continue to reform our lives during Easter, perhaps by continuing some of our Lenten practices. Because the idea is not to return to our old patterns of sin. If the things we gave up were obstacles to living a life guided by Christ in the Holy Spirit and obstacles to living in community with others, maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to go back to them. If the works of charity, service and almsgiving we did helped us to be more aware of our many blessings and more aware of the needs of others, maybe we should look for ways to continue to grow in those virtues. If our new practices of prayer helped us to grow closer to God and nourished our spiritual lives, maybe we should make room for that kind of prayer more often than just during Lent. Because with the blackboards of our lives wiped clean of sin, we don’t want to go back and write the same old story.
So what is the story that we should be writing on those clean slates? The Gospel tells us today: the story of the God’s forgiveness. That story goes something like this: Like the people in the first reading, we are called to live reformed lives. Like the people in the second reading, we must be obedient to God’s command of love. And like the disciples in the Gospel reading, we are called to go out and preach forgiveness of sins.
I know what you’re thinking right now: Deacon Pat, I’m not a preacher, how can I go out and preach the forgiveness of sins? Well, preaching, as I often need to be reminded, is much more than just speaking: it’s doing. St. Francis said it best: “Preach the Gospel constantly. When necessary, use words.” Our baptism – the baptism received at the Easter vigil, or whenever it was we were baptized, and which we renewed on Easter Sunday – empowers us to be preachers of forgiveness in our daily lives.
That might mean working to put aside the petty family squabbles, or even the significant family squabbles, that divide us. That might mean forgetting our hurts and the offenses we’ve endured so that we can repair our families and communities. It might mean that we are the ones who make the phone call to a friend even when we’ve done that a hundred times and they’ve seem to have lost our phone number. Perhaps it even means swallowing our own pride and asking for forgiveness for something that wasn’t entirely our fault. Forgiveness of sins is preached by the Church – which, brothers and sisters in Christ, is all of us – living forgiveness day in and day out.
In my Reconciliation practicum class, I have had to memorize the very beautiful words of absolution that the priest speaks to the penitent at the end of Sacramental Confession. The first part of that prayer goes like this: “God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son, has reconciled the world to himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins.” Every time I hear those words in Confession, or when I speak them in practice for hearing confessions, I am overwhelmed by the great love that God has for us. Indeed, the whole purpose of God’s unconditional love as lived in the three persons of the Trinity is to make possible the forgiveness of our sins. So our own love of God and one another must make that forgiveness possible too. That’s what it means for us to preach forgiveness of sins.
Two weeks ago today, we celebrated Easter, the great feast of our salvation, when Christ rose victorious over sin and death. Today, two weeks later, the question is, so now what? After today’s Liturgy of the Word, I think we all know the answer to that question. The new question is, will we do it?
Why is it that you're here today? Is it because your faith is what carries you through the highs and lows of life, because you need to worship in order to be empowered to live? Is it because the Word of God and the life-giving Eucharist is central to who you are and vital to the service that you give? Is it because your prayer life begins and ends in the gathered community that has its source in Christ? Is it because you came to the 9:30 or 11:30 in the Chapel last Sunday and you heard the deacon give an incredible homily and you just couldn't stay away?
Or are your motives a little less lofty? Are you here because your parents pestered you until you gave up and came to Mass? Are you here because that's what you always do on [Saturday Evening] Sunday Morning? Are you here because you are afraid of having to confess that you didn't come? Are you here because you are lonely, or had nothing else to do, or are desperate that God change your life?
The good news is that if our reason for being here today is less than perfect, we have ten patron saints locked up in that room in Jerusalem. For fear of the Jews they are together, clinging to one another, mourning their lost friend, wondering what would happen to them, and trying to make sense of the empty tomb that Mary Magdalene, Peter and the beloved disciple found earlier that day.
It doesn't matter what brings us together in this sacred place, because what really matters is that at least we are together; at least we are here. And it really is an act of faith to come together every week. More so now, perhaps, than ever before. It would be so much easier to give in to the many scandals that keep people from the Church these days. It would be far easier for all of us to give in to the embarrassment of being Catholic that we surely must feel every time we turn on the news these days. It might even be understandable to find someplace else to worship, or for priests not to wear their Roman Collars in public, or for seminarians to give up pursuing the vocation to which they've been called. But, for whatever reason, we didn't, and because we are here, together, with all of our fears and embarrassments and frailties, our Lord, in his Divine Mercy, can break through all those locked doors and say to us as he said to the Ten: "Peace be with you."
It might be easy to give poor Doubting Thomas a hard time, but it cannot be so for those of us who come here with all our fears and doubts and uncertainties. Because it is Thomas who speaks for us these days, when we would just as soon find some reason to write off what we've been taught and to do something else. For those of us with modern minds who cannot and will not believe merely on the word of others, Thomas, who would not believe on the mere words of the Ten, is our spokesman. For everyone for whom seeing is believing, Thomas's resolve to withhold judgment until he saw the Lord's hands and side is our statement of faith – such as it is.
And I think I can understand Thomas's behavior here. For whatever reason, he was missing from the group when the Lord came and appeared to them that first time. He certainly must have felt left out, and perhaps hurt that he was not given the same gift that they were. And we must remember that the Ten were all unbelieving before they saw Jesus' hands and side too: only upon seeing that were they able to exclaim: "We have seen the Lord!"
Thomas was given the opportunity to have a much more intimate experience of the Risen Lord than did the other ten. He alone was invited to reach out and touch Jesus in his brokenness: "Put your finger here," Jesus says, "and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side." Here again, Thomas is invited to the faith in the same way that we are this Easter day, because we too will have the opportunity to reach out and touch our Risen Lord, broken and bruised, in the Eucharist in a few minutes. As we take the Body and Blood of our Lord, perhaps we will hear the faith of Thomas crying out, "My Lord and my God!"
It is very important, I think, to notice that every time Jesus breaks through the locked doors, he offers his peace. In the very same way, Jesus is breaking through whatever it is that is locking us up these days and saying, "Peace be with you." The peace that Jesus offers is not just the absence of whatever conflict we are experiencing, but more so, a wholeness that binds up our brokenness, heals our wounds, and calms the cries of our doubts and fears. We have to know that it is that peace that leads us back to this sacred place, despite whatever it is that we think has brought us here this day. It is that peace that helps us recognize our Lord, triumphant over the grave, who silences the doubt that we all experience when we are broken and our lives are crazy, and our world is a mess, and our Church is in disarray.
It is that peace that brings us together to meet our Risen Lord, and which empowers us to go out in the same way the disciples did, to forgive and comfort and bless and heal and feed and love everyone in the Name of Christ. We must remember that many have not seen the Risen Lord but may come to believe because of us. And it is truly a sign of the Risen Lord, brothers and sisters in Christ, when we overcome our embarrassments and scandal and are united with each other. It is a sign of the Risen Lord when we, with all of our fears and doubts and imperfections, continue to serve others in the name of Christ. When we do that, perhaps others will see the presence of Christ in us and exclaim with Thomas, "My Lord and my God!"
So, whatever it is that has brought you here this day, please hear the words of the Risen Lord as he breaks through the locked door of your own woundedness: "Peace be with you."
Have you ever had an "aha!" experience? Probably you have, although you might not have called it that. I can remember one of mine. Back in my early 20s, I was taking voice lessons. My teacher tried for weeks – well, probably months – to get me to learn a physical thing related to singing. That involved lifting the "soft pallet" in the back of my mouth in order to make more room for sound to come out. The problem with it is that there is nothing else that you can compare that physical movement to in order to have it make sense. So I tried everything I knew to do for a long time to make it happen. And time and time again, he would repeat the same instruction to me so that I'd get it. And time and time again, I'd go home frustrated that I just did not understand.
Then one day in class, something just "clicked" and I sang the exercise we were working on. At that point my teacher said, "that's it!!!!" And I remember how it felt … my throat was much more open and the sound was better and more on pitch. Things just worked … they sounded way better than ever. That "aha!" moment forever changed the way I sang.
You've probably had an "aha!" moment too. Maybe it was getting the answer to a math problem, or mastering the technique of a pitch in baseball, or coming up with just the right combination of ingredients cooking a sauce, or getting a particularly delicate plant to grow in your garden, or getting your second wind in a long distance run. Whatever it was, you probably remember the time when it just worked and it forever changed the way you did that particular thing. That's an "aha!" moment.
Today's Gospel reading shows us the disciples still looking for that "aha!" moment in their faith. It tells us "For they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead." Here we see these eleven men, who had followed Jesus faithfully for three years and who never really grasped what it was Jesus was trying to tell them. These same eleven men were frightened and disappointed and mourning over the death of their friend. And now they've come to the tomb, only to find it empty, the cloths all rolled up and in disarray. We're told that "the other disciple" – whoever that was – "saw and believed." But one sentence later, we see that "they" – presumably including that same "other disciple" – did not yet understand.
And I think we can all understand why they didn't get it. If we look at the Gospel reading for today, it's pretty confusing. I mean, the disciples didn't get a guidebook or a list of instructions or things to look for. They weren't told what would happen when. So all they know is that the tomb is empty, and Mary Magdalene's reaction isn't hard to understand: "They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don't know where they put him." They were all confused; they did not yet have that "aha!" moment.
Even we who have the benefit of the 20/20 hindsight of history, if we're really pressed, we'd probably end up with much the same reaction as the disciples. If I went up and down the aisle here and asked a bunch of people, I'm sure not one could give me a good, step-by-step explanation of what happened on that first Easter morning. And you know what? If I were sitting there and was asked myself, I wouldn't be able to explain it either. The Resurrection, brothers and sisters in Christ, requires an act of faith, an act of faith that we must make today and every day as followers of the Lord.
The disciples couldn't make that act of faith just yet. They couldn't understand what was going on because they did not yet have an experience of meeting the Risen Lord. In the weeks to come, they'll have those experiences, and finally on Pentecost, they will be filled with the Holy Spirit in the ultimate "aha!" moment. Then everything will become crystal clear for them and they can proclaim the Gospel to every corner of the earth.
We, too, must have those experiences of the Risen Lord in our lives. Otherwise we can't possibly be expected to understand any of this. Those experiences of the Risen Lord are what lead us to our own "aha!" moments of faith and enable us to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
The great thing is that we can have an experience of the Risen Lord every single Sunday of our lives, by coming to this sacred place. It is here that we hear the Word proclaimed, here that we partake of the very Body and Blood of our Lord. An occasional experience of this mystery simply will not do; we must nurture our faith with many experiences of the Risen Lord – today, and every Sunday of our lives – so that we can have the "aha!" moments that make our faith grow.
And on those days when those "aha!" moments of our faith bring everything into focus, when we come to better clarity of who we are and who our Lord is, we can proclaim with the psalmist: "This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad!"
All-powerful and ever-living God,
your only Son went down among the dead
and rose again in glory.
In your goodness
raise up your faithful people,
buried with him in baptism,
to be one with him
in the eternal life of heaven,
where he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
That prayer, from today's Liturgy of the Hours, sums up this day of the Triduum, which we must admit is probably one of the most mysterious days of our faith. This is the day that we remember that line in the Apostle's Creed, "he descended into hell."
The second reading for today's Office of Readings speaks of the weirdness of this day: "Something strange is happening–there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness." It's weird because we all know, at this point in history, what is to come. But yet the world and especially the Liturgy are quiet, and will remain so until the wondrous cacophony of the Easter Gloria at tonight's Vigil.
The best I think we can all do is to enter into the silence–and the weirdness–and see what Word is spoken to us in all of that. Let us truly silence ourselves in order to prepare to celebrate with all the more raucousness the Resurrection of our Lord.
What got me today was the spiritual, "Were You There?" It was sung this afternoon at Veneration of the Cross, of course, and also this evening at the Living Stations of the Cross. The youth acted this out, and sang a verse of the spiritual between every station. I found that very moving. I think sometimes kids can be so simply profound in their acting out of something sacred.
And the song took on a new meaning for me this year than it has in the past. There's always the almost-syrupy emotional response to this song, which I find, well, annoying. So usually it's just a song to sing for me. But this year, as I sang it at both services, I found it contemplative, meditative, almost like praying the rosary. It was an extremely prayerful experience, which added to the prayerfulness of the day. As the sufferings of our Lord were retold in the sung Passion this afternoon, and acted out stations this evening, in some ways, we were there in a remembering act of anamnesis.
Today's Mass of the Lord's Supper was a great beginning to the Triduum for me. Fr. Frank's homily focused on the Mandatum of "serve and give:" a motto that was pounded home to him in his early seminary days. It was a reflection on Matthew 20:28, and he made a point that really hit home to me: that those who get into ministry — any ministry — for the wrong reasons are bound to be disappointed. The only reason for anyone to enter priestly ministry, diaconal ministry, the religious life or any lay ministry is to serve, just as Christ did, and to give of oneself. Anything else is completely useless, completely false, and ultimately disappointing.
So when he had washed their feet
and put his garments back on and reclined at table again,
he said to them, “Do you realize what I have done for you?
You call me ‘teacher’ and ‘master,’ and rightly so, for indeed I am.
If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet,
you ought to wash one another’s feet.I have given you a model to follow,
so that as I have done for you, you should also do.”
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