Passion Sunday: Pick Up Your Cross . . .

Passion Sunday     

Today’s liturgical observance is officially called “Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord.”  The name reflects the dual nature of the liturgy, as the Mass is preceded by a procession with palms in commemoration of Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, but the readings include one of the Gospel accounts (this year St. Mark’s) of his arrest, trial, and crucifixion.

     My “inner Pharisee” is sometimes tempted to think that this pre-figuring of Good Friday before the fact  is much like the practice of moving Ascension Thursday to a Sunday in order to catch people who can’t be bothered to show up in church on a week day, but that is not the case.  Even if there weren't many people who have jobs that won’t allow participation in the Good Friday liturgy, or are kept away for other reasonable causes, there are good reasons to turn to the events of the Passion before the Triduum, and the practice goes back further than one might think.  Prior to Vatican II the second Sunday before Easter was known as Passion Sunday (as is still the case, of course, in the Extraordinary Rite), which introduced the Passiontide, a two week period of more intense focus on the suffering and death of Jesus; in combining it with Palm Sunday, we have actually moved Passion Sunday a week closer to Good Friday. Christ’s self-sacrifice at Calvary is one of the most important events in the Liturgical Year, and really one of the most significant events in all of human history, so it is fitting that we don't just pass over it in a day or two. Placing the Passion at the center of this Sunday’s liturgy gives the direction for the rest of Holy Week, so that we’re already in the proper frame of mind before we reach the culminating events of Holy Thursday and Good Friday

     Combining Passion Sunday with Palm Sunday also gives us an interesting and, I think, fruitful perspective on the events leading up to the Crucifixion.  Very many, at least, of the people singing “hosanna” as Jesus rode into Jerusalem were not cheering for the real Jesus but for a fantasy Messiah who, they thought, would be a very worldly savior.   Many of these same people, most likely, were calling for his crucifixion a few days later.  Moving from the Palms to the Passion in the same liturgy helps drive home that reality for us, and our participation in both ends of the process reminds us (or should, at least) of our own complicity in the Crucifixion of Jesus (for more on this point, see my post “Palm Sunday: Who Are Those Cheering People?”).

     Too often we try to take shortcuts to rewards of various kinds without doing the hard work that those rewards require; today we are reminded that if we want Christ as our King, we need to pick up our cross and follow him.

Awaiting the Arrival of the God Who is Man (movie Arrival)

God Only Knows

  What would we do if we were God?  “Well”, we might think, “what wouldn’t I do!”  I'm sure we could all think of things we would do differently if it were up to us.  Hunger, disease, suffering . . . who needs those?  Gone! Looks easy, doesn’t it?  

The Fall of Phaethon by Ferrau Fenzoni

It looks easy, that is, until we start to think about it a little more deeply.  Holding the entire infinitely complex universe in being requires multi-tasking of a sort we can’t even imagine.  To get just a glimpse of the problem, consider ancient Greek story of Phaethon. Phaethon was a young man who eagerly leapt at the chance to drive the chariot of the Sun - what could go wrong?  Plenty, as it turned out: the foolish, overconfident mortal couldn’t control the Sun god’s horses, and left the world a smoking ruin.  We have seen real-world parallels in more recent times in the calamity that has consistently resulted even from more down-to-earth ambitions, such as planned economies (see: North Korea, mass starvation).

    And yet we can’t seem to help ourselves.  We all understand what Phaethon’s crash is supposed to tell us, and nobody will deny that our intellects are finite.  We still seem to think, however, that we can judge the mind of God.  For instance, we have all heard objections to Christian beliefs phrased as, “Why would God do that? Why would a good God allow suffering? Couldn’t God have made a world without sin? Wouldn’t an all-powerful God find a more direct way to make his wishes known?” and so on.  All such objections can really be reduced to: “That’s not what I would do if I were God!”  But we’re not God, and a God capable of creating an entire universe ex nihilo can’t help but be something, or better yet someone, of an entirely different order than ourselves.  

The Lord Works In Mysterious Ways

    Understanding the radical difference between our Creator and ourselves is essential to accepting and working within our own limitations.  Explaining it to an unbelieving world, however, presents something of a challenge to Christian evangelists.  One the one hand, an infinite God is necessarily beyond our comprehension in many respects; on the other, as sceptics have correctly pointed out, simply dismissing difficulties with “The Lord works in mysterious ways!” can be an awful convenient way of skirting potential problems . . . and will persuade precisely nobody.   And yet we Christians are called to “Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15).   

Louise (Amy Adams) attempting to communicate with alien in Arrival.

    My sons and I watched a film recently, Arrival, which raises similar questions.  Arrival is the story a linguist named Louise Banks (played by actress Amy Adams) who is called upon by the U.S. government to attempt to communicate with the occupants of one of twelve UFOs that have come down to Earth.  Like the Star Trek episode “Darmok” (which I discuss HERE), this film explores the difficulties, and potential rewards, of learning to comprehend not simply the language, but the very different thought processes of beings whose way of understanding is profoundly different from ours. As far as I know, the makers of the movie did not have any any specifically Christian intent, but there are some interesting connections.  Bishop Robert Barron has published an insightful essay in which he uses Arrival to explore the way in which God speaks to us through the human writers of Holy Scripture.

How Can We See God?

    Bishop Barron addresses himself to a specifically Scriptural question; when I saw the film, it led me to think about some other aspects  of God’s self-revelation as well.  Let's start, however, with "Darmok", the Star Trek episode mentioned above: here we see human beings interacting with utterly alien creatures who are nevertheless at a roughly equal stage of development.  In Arrival the aliens are clearly much more advanced than the earthlings in a number of respects, but they still struggle mightily to make themselves understood.  Their human interlocutors need to work just as hard as they do to make a connection, and the whole project nearly ends in world-wide disaster. In some ways their more developed technology and (for lack of a better term) more developed awareness makes them even more threatening and inaccessible to humans, making the task of establishing communication that much harder.

    Let’s consider now the situation of the Infinite God, immeasurably more advanced than the aliens in Arrival.  How can this gap, infinitely wider than that between the movie aliens and humanity, be bridged? Suppose he were to reveal himself to us directly, as the doubters demand.  How would He do that? If  a being so radically beyond us were somehow visible, would we even understand what we were looking at? Also, if other creatures can frighten us, how do we react to an entity more powerful than the entire universe itself?  As God tells Moses, “No one may see me and live” (Exodus 33:20).  How can He reveal himself to his creatures without overwhelming them?

The Face of the Living God

The Crucifixion, by Leon Bonnat

An all-powerful God, fortunately, who created us and knows us better than we know ourselves, can do what otherworldly aliens, however advanced, cannot: he can speak to us clearly through our fellow humans. We see this pattern throughout Salvation History, from Abraham through Moses through the prophets.  Even here, however, it was all too easy for people to reject God’s messengers; after all, weren’t they only men as well?  Jesus Himself explains this difficulty, and the solution to it, in a parable:

There was a householder who planted a vineyard, and set a hedge around it, and dug a wine press in it, and built a tower, and let it out to tenants, and went into another country. When the season of fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants, to get his fruit; and the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other servants, more than the first; and they did the same to them. Afterward he sent his son to them, saying, 'They will respect my son.'  (Matthew 21:33-37)

In Jesus Christ, then,  the Eternal, Infinite God comes to us in human form.  As Jesus says in another place:

He who has seen me has seen the Father; how can you say, 'Show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me? (John 14:9-10)

In Jesus Christ God does reveal himself directly, but in a form we can truly understand, as a fellow creature with whom we can identify. When we look at Christ we look at God, “For in him the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily” (Colossians 2:9).

His name shall be called Emmanuel, which means God With Us (Matthew 1:23)

    Even that, however, is not the whole story. Let’s return to Jesus’ parable from the Gospel of Matthew,  and see what the wicked tenants do when the the Father sends his Son to them:

But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, 'This is the heir; come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.' And they took him and cast him out of the vineyard, and killed him. (Matthew 21:38-39)

The Annunciation of the Shepherds, Jules Bastien Lepage

    In real life, as we know, the true Son is indeed killed on the Cross, then proves his Divinity by rising from the dead: a clear, tangible sign.  Through his Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection, he shows us not only what sort of God he is, but also what sort of men and women  we can be if we follow his example.  And in fact he has continued to communicate to us through men and women who have followed that example over the past two millennia, and we now venerate these people as Saints.

    The Incarnation, then, is the Big Breakthrough that the Aliens in Arrival can’t hope to accomplish, the Breaking Through of the Infinite God into our world in the form of a finite man.  God’s answer to the problem is suffering is that, as a man, He shares in our suffering; if we in turn join our suffering to his, we can spend eternity with Him far beyond the pain and sorrow of this world.  That’s a better solution than anything we could come up with on our own.

    For this reason the Incarnation is, as the Angel tells the shepherds of Bethlehem, “good news of a great joy which will come to all the people” (Luke 2:10). That is why we devote these four weeks of the Season of Advent preparing for the arrival (adventus in Latin) of the Messiah in the form of the baby Jesus: He is the One Man who truly knows how to be God.

Be Vigilant At All Times (Worth Revisiting)

An earlier version of this Worth Revisiting post was first published November 29th, 2014.

To enjoy the work of other faithful Catholic bloggers see Worth Revisiting Wednesday, hosted by Elizabeth Reardon at theologyisaverb.com and Allison Gingras at reconciledtoyou.com.

   I discovered a very curious thing one day.  As we were saying our family prayers, I noticed that the rosary that I have been carrying has only nine beads on its first decade, as you can see in the picture to the left.  It has wooden beads strung on a strong cord which has never broken, so it must have been that way since I bought it.

     The first thought that entered my mind (after I got over my initial surprise) was of the Muslim prayer rugs that have a few stiches the wrong color, or the great mosques where every row of columns has one that’s just slightly out of kilter.  The makers put these imperfections into their work intentionally, as an acknowledgement that only God can lay claim to perfection, which it is right and proper for us to acknowledge.

     These visible flaws don’t simply remind us that God is perfect, of course; their purpose is also to remind us that we ourselves are radically imperfect; not simply morally flawed, but incomplete without God.  So my flawed rosary, through the (unintentional, no doubt) mistake of its maker can represent the flawed nature of all of us. 

     There is also a reminder here, however, of my own particular imperfection: I have carried this rosary in my pocket for seven or eight years; I don't use it every day (when I pray the rosary in the car, as I often do, I usually forgo the beads and use my fingers, in the interests of automotive safety), but I use it frequently enough that I ought to have noticed that it is one “Hail Mary” short.  In fact, I really should have noticed when I first bought it at the local Catholic book store.  So, I have not only a symbol of human imperfection, but a very real, concrete reminder of my own broken nature, and in a very particular area.    

     As it happens, when I first discovered the curious flaw in my rosary and set out to write about it, this was the Gospel reading for the day:

Jesus said to his disciples: “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life, and that day catch you by surprise like a trap. For that day will assault everyone who lives on the face of the earth. Be vigilant at all times and pray that you have the strength to escape the tribulations that are imminent and to stand before the Son of Man.”    (Luke 21:34-36)

We are about to embark on the Season of Lent, a penitential season which hearkens back to Christ's forty day fast in the desert in preparation for his earthly ministry.  It is a time of penance, and of purification, in which we are preparing our hearts for the trials of Holy Thursday and Good Friday, and the triumph of Easter Sunday. The warning Jesus gives to his disciples above is a warning to us as well: "Be vigilant at all times".  Two verses later we see the chief priests plotting to kill him, and Satan entering into Judas Iscariot.  This is Christ's final warning before the Passion Narrative begins to unfold, to his disciples then and now.  Be vigilant.  It looks like I have my work cut out for me; and every time I put my hand in my pocket, I have a tangible warning of how far I have to go.

11th Day of Christmas - I Heard the Bells On Christmas Day (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow & Johnny Cash)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1868

Merry Christmas!  Today is the Eleventh Day of Christmas.  Today I’d like to take a look at a particularly moving Christmas song. There's a story behind the creation of every song, and sometimes knowing the story can make the song all the more meaningful.  This is one of my favorites:

On Christmas Day, 1863, the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a poem called “Christmas Bells” which begins with church bells ringing out the joy of Christmas:

I heard the bells on Christmas Day

Their old, familiar carols play,

and wild and sweet

The words repeat

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,

The belfries of all Christendom

Had rolled along

The unbroken song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,

The world revolved from night to day,

A voice, a chime,

A chant sublime

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Henry, Charles, Ernest, and Frances Longfellow

The poet, however, was not filled with unmixed good cheer.  His wife had recently died a tragic death in a house fire, and he had just received news that his son Charles, who had left without his knowledge or consent to fight in the bitter Civil War that was embroiling the United States, had been wounded in battle.  Longfellow, himself struggling with sorrow in the midst of our most festive season,  juxtaposes the joyful ringing of bells in “The belfries of all Christendom” with the manifest lack of peace among men:

Then from each black, accursed mouth

The cannon thundered in the South,

And with the sound

The carols drowned

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent

The hearth-stones of a continent,

And made forlorn

The households born

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

These images of war and shattered homes seem to give the lie to the joyful promise of the Christmas Bells:

And in despair I bowed my head;

"There is no peace on earth," I said;

"For hate is strong,

And mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Christ did not come, of course, simply to bring joy: he came to free us from the power of sin.  Our Faith is grounded in Christian Hope, which is the confidence that the Power of God is greater the the power of hate, and stronger than hate's master.  Longfellow's closing stanza resolves the conflict between Christmas joy and the sin and violence of this world with a ringing assertion of Christian Hope:

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The Wrong shall fail,

The Right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men."

"My Friend, The Enemy" by Mort Kunstler

Longfellow, who had very powerful incentives to turn to despair, instead created a poem that shows us that the joy of Christmas is not a denial of the brokenness of this world, but God's answer to it.

Longfellow’s poem has been put to music numerous times over the past century and a half (usually under the title, “I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day”); my favorite is Johnny Cash’s rendition.  Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find a good video of Cash performing the song, so the clip below will have to do (good recording, no video).

One curious note: all the musical adaptations that I have found have left out Longfellow’s 4th and 5th stanzas, with their references to thundering cannon and forlorn households.  The version below also moves stanza 3 (“Till ringing, singing . . .”) behind Longfellow’s concluding stanza (“God is not dead . . .”), and then repeats the “God is not dead” stanza.  The effect is to de-emphasize the reasons for the speaker’s cry of despair, and give greater emphasis to the redemptive conclusion.  It seems to me that the change robs the song of some of it’s narrative coherence (why should the speaker “bow his head in despair” after hearing "peace on earth, good will to men"?), and, by replacing those concrete examples of suffering with the abstraction "hate", deprive it of much of its dramatic power.  I suppose the song-makers thought those images too heavy for a Christmas song, but in fact they are a stark reminder of why the coming of the Messiah is "Good tidings of great joy" (Luke 2:10).

For all that, the sense of Longfellow’s poem still comes through in the song: the joyful celebration of Christmas seems to be mocked by the all-too-evident evil in the world (and is there any one of us who is not, right now, directly aware of some reason for anger or sorrow?).  The conclusion reminds us that the Child lying in the wooden manger will one day hang upon a wooden cross, precisely so that he might carry us through those evils to the feet of His Father. When we learn about the real suffering that the author of those words was experiencing as he wrote them, we can experience the song, not as sentimentality or empty platitude, but as a true triumph of Christian Hope. Let the bells peal loud and deep!

Holy Saturday

    Holy Saturday is unlike the other days of the Easter Triduum.  We celebrate the Mass of the Lord's Supper on Holy Thursday, on Good Friday we commemorate the drama of Calvary; on Easter Sunday, of course, there is the Glory of the Resurrection.   Holy Saturday, on the other hand, is an in-between time, a time of waiting, until the Easter Vigil begins at nightfall.

    Holy Saturday, for us, is also a time of preparation, because we know Easter is coming.  My sons and I usually attend Morning Prayer and the Office of Readings at the Cathedral first thing in the morning; this year we're staying afterwards to help decorate the Cathedral for the Easter liturgies.  At home, too, we'll be busy with cooking for the Holy Day and other preparations.

    We can easily forget that Holy Saturday was not like that the first time around.  The Disciples were frightened, devastated by the the loss of their Master, and despite his prophetic suggestions that things would happen just this way, it must have seemed to them that he was gone forever. On top of that, most of them were feeling the full shame of the knowledge that they had abandoned their Master in his time of trial; in the case of Peter, the "Rock", that he had even denied him, not once, but three times.

    It would be good for us to pause a moment today, in the midst of our preparations, to remember how abandoned those first Christians felt.  God does all things in the ripeness of time, and it seems that He wanted them, and us, to have a little while to experience the full weight of Christ’s Sacrifice on the the Cross before celebrating the profound joy of the Resurrection.  Why rush it?

"O Sacred head Sore Wounded" - JS Bach (King's College, Cambridge)

Over this past Lent I have been posting clips from Mozart's Requiem and J.S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion that complement the penitential focus of the liturgical season. In my final music posting of Lent, we look directly at "nothing but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified" (1 Corinthians 2:2)

(My penultimate music clip for Lent is “So Now My Jesus Is Taken Prisoner” from Bach’s  St. Matthew Passion, on the Principium et Finis blog)