Holy Week and Easter has been one of my favorite times of year pretty much as long as I can remember. But this year it feels more intense.
Palm Sunday
Mass started like it always does on Palm Sunday, outside for the blessing of the palm branches and the entrance into Jerusalem gospel reading. The sun was very bright, so I closed my eyes during the reading. And standing there with my eyes closed, the warm sun beating down on me, I could see it. The disciples finding the donkey. Jesus riding the donkey. The crowd of adoring followers. Most clearly though, I could see the ground. It looked exactly like the paths at Camp El Tesoro, where my sister and I went to summer camp for years. (Maybe that had something to do with all the time I’ve spent scanning and sorting through old photos lately?) When the gospel reading was over, I opened my eyes and felt like I was suddenly pulled back to the present moment. Like I’d somehow been transported and experienced what it would’ve been like to actually be there in Jerusalem 2000 years ago. As we all walked inside, it started to hit me that what had just happened was more than ordinary imagination. And it took my breath away.
Holy Thursday
This gospel reading has one of my favorite lines ever (“What I am doing, you do not understand now, but you will understand later”), but then the homily really bothered me. The priest said he was proud of the children who were there, proud of the children who participated in the liturgy (altar servers, etc.), proud of the choir, proud of the young adult community. Pride. Part of me wanted to stand up and scream at him to stop using that dangerous word. Maybe for the same reason that I refuse to applaud in church. Teaching us to seek human approval and recognition for giving our time and talents back to God, like we should want to do anyway. And being proud of doing something we’re supposed to do can have consequences. For example, we tend to have one or two particular sins we keep coming back to. I’ve had the same “favorite sin” for years, and whenever I feel proud of myself for not committing that sin for a while, it’s never long before I fall again. Often within hours. Or even minutes.
The Triduum services at my church have been bilingual for the past few years, so half of the homily was in Spanish. (I recognized enough words to tell that it was pretty much the same things he’d said in English.) So my exhausted mind began to wander. I gazed up at the window above the altar. There are different colored panes of glass to look like a cross with a sort of halo around the middle. And the thought occurred to me that the “halo” portion of the window looked broken. Like the cross burst through and shattered everything around it. And I thought, “That’s as it should be, because that’s what Jesus wants to do in each of our lives. He’s not some distant figure staying comfortably at arms length while we go on living like we always have. He came to shatter our comfortable world with the cross and show us something better. He wants to be a real, personal part of our lives.”
The choir sang a beautiful “Ave Verum Corpus” during communion, and for a while I was mouthing the words along with them because I know the hymn well. But when I stood up and exited my pew, I couldn’t anymore. It was all I could do to say, “Amen,” when I received the Eucharist. And when I got back to my seat and knelt, I completely broke down. I haven’t cried like that in a long time. Consciously controlling my breathing to keep myself quiet. Tears running freely down my face. I still don’t know why. But it left me feeling peaceful somehow, and then I didn’t cry in adoration like I’d expected to.
Good Friday
Fasting day! Went to Stations of the Cross at noon, and all I’d had since 11:00 the previous night was a smoothie that morning. I felt weak and slightly delirious. Which made it one of the best Stations of the Cross I’ve experienced, considering how weak and broken Jesus felt. And yet, HE KEPT GOING. For us. For me. For YOU.
This is the one day of the year when no masses are celebrated. Extra hosts are consecrated at mass on Holy Thursday so we can still have communion. And the contribution my exhausted mind made tonight was, “Jesus knew what he was doing. He knew he had to leave, but he left enough of himself behind so he could still be here with us. Always.”
Easter Vigil
The beginning of the Easter Vigil is my favorite part of any mass. Everyone has a candle. After the Easter candle is blessed, all of our candles are lit from its flame. And there’s no other light in the church. Something that starts so small and grows to fill a whole building with light. Then for the readings, we all extinguish our candles and only the Easter candle is left. Just a single point of light. Burning bright and cutting through the darkness.
The first reading is the creation story. When it reached the part about the sun and moon, I was reminded of something I’d heard before. Like the moon, we have no light of our own. All we can do is reflect the light of the Son.
Then right before singing the “Gloria” ALL the lights are turned on. It was so BRIGHT. It was actually painful. I kept trying to open my eyes fully but I physically couldn’t do it. It wasn’t until the song was over, after much repeated blinking and squinting, that I finally managed it. And it made me think. Living in a world with so much darkness, maybe people are closed to the light because it’s just too intense and they can’t handle it. Maybe if there were subtle ways to introduce the light gradually, people would be willing to give it a chance and let it shine.
Easter
I left partway through the Easter Vigil (after the Litany of Saints, about an hour and a half in) so I came back for Easter morning. Although even if I’d stayed for the whole Easter Vigil I might have come back anyway. I LOVE EASTER! I sat with friends and their 16-month-old (I think?) son, the music was beautiful, the homily struck all the right chords (like not being able to process amazing victories right away because you’re not entirely sure what just happened). But I think my favorite moment was during the closing hymn, singing the line, “All around the clouds are breaking,” while looking up through the window and seeing the sunshine grow brighter.
A Shift In The Light 