Our Christian community on Ash Wednesday invited us to treat ourselves to those age-old exercises of prayer, and fasting (or doing without so that others can have) and almsgiving (or sharing our time, talent and treasure with others) so that we can deepen our relationship with God and our fellow human beings. I hope your exercises during the Lenten season have been invigorating.
Today we begin Holy Week, the chief week of the Liturgical Year. We focus in particular upon the Paschal mystery (the dying & rising of Jesus Christ); or the journey of Jesus from this earthly life through the mystery of death into a transformative heavenly life.
Now the word “paschal” refers to the Hebrew Passover or the passing of the angel of death over the homes of the Hebrews in ancient Egypt (a passing over that spared their first-born child from death). In a larger sense, the Passover refers to the exodus or liberation of the Hebrews from their oppressors; and every year the Jewish community re-experiences this exodus or liberation in the so-called Seder service which they will celebrate at sunset April 29.
This Palm Sunday, we reflect upon a paradox of triumph and tragedy: the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem on the one hand, and the Gospel proclamation of the passion and death of Jesus on the other. And even in the tragedy of Good Friday there is the triumph of Easter; Jesus, crucified, risen and in our midst.
The Word of God from Isaiah is a poem about a “servant” who suffers for us (the early Christian community saw Jesus in this servant).
Paul’s letter to the Christian community at Philippi quotes an early Christian hymn about God who became one of us.
And the Gospel according to Mark proclaims the passion and death of Jesus.
Next Thursday, Friday and Saturday are known as the triduum (from a Latin word which means a period of three days).
On Thursday we will commemorate the Lord’s Supper: there is the washing of feet (a symbol of service); and then the eating of a meal—a sacrificial meal-- in which Jesus gives himself to us in the signs of bread and wine (a symbol of our oneness not only with God but also oneness with our fellow human beings).
On Good Friday we meditate upon the passion and death of Jesus: the Garden of Gethsemane; the trial; the crucifixion; and the burial; the veneration of the cross; and then a simple communion service.
And at the Easter vigil we will reflect upon the passage of Jesus from this earthly life through death into a transformative heavenly life; the resurrection of Jesus is a pledge of our own liberation from death or nothingness into eternal life.
The Vigil includes: fire (a symbol of Jesus as the light who illuminates the darkness around us); it includes the proclamation of the story of our salvation in the Scriptures; it includes the renewal of our baptismal promises; and it includes the Eucharist.
Easter proclaims that Jesus is risen; alive among us, and especially alive in the sacramental life of our Catholic community.
This is indeed the chief week of the Catholic liturgical year and I urge all of you to participate in these services as much as you can.
Let me conclude with a story about a German ship, the Deutschland, which ran aground on a shoal four miles off the coast of England in 1875.
Unlike the Titanic, the Deutschland had enough life boats and life preservers for everyone. But it did the passengers no good. The fierce gale winds swamped the boats and the passengers were told to go to the deck. Although the passengers could see the lights of the English shore, no one saw the ship’s distress signals.
And among the 157 passengers who perished were five Franciscan nuns traveling to Missouri for a new teaching ministry. They were immortalized in a poem to which I will allude in a moment.
These five nuns, fleeing Otto von Bismarck’s anti-Catholic legislation in 1873, stayed below deck because there wasn’t enough room on the deck. And as the poem reads: As the water rose around them, they clasped hands and were heard saying, “O Christ, O Christ, come quickly!”
The English Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins was profoundly moved by the newspaper accounts of this tragedy and wrote a poem about it, The Wreck of the Deutschland, which he dedicated to these five Franciscan nuns. He saw in their deaths a parallel to the sufferings of Jesus for the sake of the many. Hopkins concludes the poem with this line referring to Christ:
Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us … As used in this poem, the word “easter” is a nautical term. It means steering a craft toward the east, into the light. And that light is Jesus Christ.
Yes, “Let Christ easter in us” so that we may reflect his life by practicing virtue, e.g., compassion, peacemaking, justice, truth and forgiveness.
“Let Christ easter in us” that he may empower us to be healers, teachers and foot washers like him.
“Let Christ easter in us” so that he may give us courage to bear our crosses as he bore his cross for us.
“Let him easter in us” so that at the end of our earthly voyage Christ may carry us away within himself forever.
Yes, throughout these 40 days of Lent we have been trying to steer our lives toward the light of Jesus Christ, trying to shake off the darkness around us, and the burdens of our daily lives.
And I pray that this Holy Week will inspire us to seek ever more enthusiastically the God who became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth, and who by his death and resurrection opened up to all humankind a transformative eternal life beyond this earthly life.
And then in the moment of our own dying, we, like those five Franciscan nuns in the poem, will be able to pray, O Christ, O Christ, come quickly so that you can “easter” or live in us as our light forever.
