This morning I was anticipating all the spectacular liturgies of the coming week, beginning tomorrow morning with Palm Sunday. For people who only go to Mass on Christmas and Easter, the Holy Week liturgies would probably be the longest, most penitential and inexplicable services imaginable. An interminable Sunday Mass. And if you don't even go to Sunday Mass, that is interminable indeed. So how do you present these remarkable liturgies to someone who doesn't "do" liturgy, basically, at all?
I don't know if this would help or not, but it occurred to me that the liturgy itself is a form of contemplation-made-manifest. It is revealing something that is at the same time within, above and beyond our normal experience, but it only has access (externally speaking) to the things that are part and parcel of our normal experience: time, movement, words, music. So what does the liturgy do? It unfolds in time, but not in our usual frenetic pace, and not with the goal of "getting something done" or out of the way, but with the leisurely pace of something that is done for its own sake. It uses movement, but these are the movements of a ballet, not the efficient movements of a factory. It uses words, but even the words are not everyday speech, intended to get a message across, but the language of admiration, love and thanksgiving, and they are addressed to someone we can only perceive with the eyes of faith. And the music... well, it certainly isn't what you generally hear in the elevator or on the radio! All together, time, movements, words and music are taken up as a visible form of contemplation in an action that is, essentially, totally beyond us, since the real action is that of the "totus Christus" (the "whole Christ") in his Mystical Body.
How would you speak of the liturgy, especially in this most exceptional liturgical week?
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This year I am struck by the idea of the Triduum as one continuous liturgy that starts on Thursday with the opening procession of The Mass of the Lord's Supper and ending with the sung "Thanks be to God, alleluia, alleluia!" at the conclusion of the Easter Vigil Mass followed by the community singing together "Jesus Christ is Risen Today," or "Alle, Alle," or "the Hallelujah Chorus," or "All Shall Be Well."
As Jesus entered into His passion and journey towards our redemption, we too enter deeply into contemplating the Paschal Mystery by commemorating these sacred acts and moments almost in slow motion.
The Paschal Mystery is so big, so deep, so beyond our human comprehension, that it is absolutely necessary to contemplate it in great detail and with great care at least once a year. If we are able to enter into this sacred contemplation, how blest we are and what a truly grace-filled experience of Easter we can enjoy!
As we approach the start of this week unlike any other week, my thoughts to the words of this sung refrain (sung in the voice of Jesus):
JERUSALEM MY DESTINY by Rory Cooney
" ... I have set my eyes on your hills, Jerusalem, my destiny, though I cannot see the end for me, I cannot turn away ..."
Jesus cannot turn away and we are called to accompany him through our commemoration of Holy Week, in the end always reminded that in the passion, death, and resurrection of life, we are part of a journey that forms us into one body of Christ if we allow it.
In the words of the second part of the refrain, we respond
"... We have set our hearts for this way; this journey is our destiny. Let no one walk alone --- the journey makes us one!"
These are amazingly sacred days, unlike any other days of the year. May we be blessed with the grace to experience them through all the beauty of the Liturgy of the Triduum.
I remember a homily that really struck me some years ago, when the priest said that "the liturgy actually makes present the grace of the feast." It's not just a remembering like we would recall the founding of our country on the fourth of July, but in recalling the saving events of Jesus' death and resurrection, by grace we relive them. We touch Jesus by faith and he actually communicates to us, here and now, the graces that he merited for us through his sufferings and death and resurrection.
So when you hear the hymn "Where you there when they crucified my Lord..." if we've participated in the liturgy we can say "Yes!"
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