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Greetings, SBT Readers:
When we listen to the texts of Holy Week, we will hear them more deeply if we bring both mind and heart to the experience. When we listen only with the mind, our response becomes analytical, critical, purely rational, dry; there is a coldness and a detachment to our listening, and while we may feel intellectual satisfaction at having followed the footnotes and read all the commentaries, something is missing. Conversely, when we listen only with the heart, we can move into sentimentalism, lack of objectivity, unable to distinguish the literal from the symbolic or to understand the historical context. A heart/mind approach, however, creates a totally different experience: there is place for both footnotes and symbols, for analysis and creative response; in effect, the text becomes our own as in the following poem crafted by the Lectio Divina group at St. Francis of Assisi Parish, Orland Park, IL:
Palm Sunday
Do not be afraid--
your King is coming
on a donkey,
prophecies fulfilled
during times of festival.
See how the whole world
runs after him,
singing, shouting,
Hosanna, Blessed Be,
extending cloaks,
waving palm branches.
It's as impossible
for stones to cry out
as for disciples
rejoicing in Jesus,
to be quiet...
Holy Week Blessings!
Elizabeth
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SCRIPTURE REFLECTION
Palm Sunday Readings
Holy Thursday -Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper
Good Friday
The Lord GOD has given me
a well-trained tongue,
that I might know how to speak to the weary
with words that will rouse them.
Morning after morning
God opens my ears that I may hear;
and I have not rebelled,
have not turned back.
I gave my back to those who beat me,
my cheeks to those who plucked my beard;
my face I did not shield
from buffets and spitting.
The Lord GOD is my help,
therefore I am not disgraced;
I have set my face like flint,
knowing that I shall not be put to shame.
Is 50:4-7
Where to begin? What words and images best capture the events we commemorate in Holy Week? There are so many rich texts, so many profound moments beginning with the procession of palms and ending with the empty tomb. Like an audience attending plays in ancient Greece, we know the plot, the cast of characters, the outcome of the story. And like that audience, we experience a range of emotions -- joy, outrage, fear, terror, horror, amazement, awe, wonder... For the ancient Greeks, watching tragedies was a cathartic experience during which they would weep for the protagonists and shudder in horror as events unfolded; then, when the situation became too painful to bear, there would be some resolution-- often divine intervention-- to bring events to a close. Being part of the audience offered a communal religious experience that brought emotional and psychological release, a little like a massive Reconciliation service. In some ways, accompanying Jesus through his Passion allows us to be cleansed emotionally as we shout our Hosannas, recline with him at the Last Supper, pray with him in the Garden of Gethsemane and then walk the Via Dolorosa....
But the purpose of Holy Week, especially of the Triduum, is neither to activate a historical memory, nor merely to re-enact events from 2,000 years ago. At the same time, though we are likely to experience profound emotions, being "purged" is not why we enter Holy Week. In The Sacred and the Profane (Harcourt, 1959), Mircea Eliade explains that the purpose of ritual is to help us enter sacred time: "Every religious festival, any liturgical time, represents the reactualization of a sacred event that took place in a mythical past, 'in the beginning'" (68-69). What this means is that every liturgy invites us to be fully present at the events being commemorated, not just in the present moment, but at the moment the events first happened. In this way, we are not simply processing around a church waving palms to re-create Jesus' entry into Jerusalem but we are literally there, in the sacred city, as joyous members of the crowd, as elated disciples, as curious bystanders... Similarly, when we wash each other's feet on Holy Thursday and celebrate the institution of the Eucharist, we are not merely recalling events but placing ourselves in the upper room along with Jesus and his apostles. We become part of his entourage, part of his company, seeing and beholding all that his disciples beheld, hearing all that they heard, questioning as they did, insisting that we will never deny him or betray him... And so, too, with the other major events of the Passion -- Jesus' agony in the garden, his arrest, the trials and torture he endured, his humiliation, his interrogation by the Roman and Jewish authorities, the crucifixion.... We are there, as surely as he was there, witnessing and experiencing everything...
A re-enactment keeps us in the present tense, in profane time or in chronos -- the time governed by the clock. When our consciousness remains in chronos, we find ourselves wondering how much longer the liturgy is going to last, and we are likely to experience fatigue or distraction, even boredom. While we may get caught up in the solemnity of the moment and even be moved by the music, we are still here when we could be there!
Liturgy is like a time machine, ready to transport us from the ordinariness of life into the extraordinary, from the mundane into the sacred, from the rational into mystery, from chronos into kairos, that time of timelessness. We celebrate the sacred rites not out of habit, nor out of obligation but out of necessity, for through them we become companions of the Holy One-- imperfect, yes, but willing to bring our authentic selves to the streets of Jerusalem, to the olive groves of Gethsemane, to the foot of the Cross. No longer mere spectators, we become participants in the greatest drama of them all... the Paschal Mystery of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.....
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