Eastertide

Eastertide never rolls in, instead it is storm born, eroding the barriers, the dunes I walked in Lent. 

Last week I plunged into the Triduum for once not juggling work and Holy Week. There was Morning Prayer on Thursday, I walked the path to the Vigil on Saturday night, emerging after an Easter Sunday Mass to a warm and perfect day. I was an acolyte on Good Friday, proclaimed the Epistle from Romans on Saturday night. I sang with the small men's group Easter morning and shook the bells during the Gloria. (I'd been entrusted with that last year, but the not-yet-diagnosed Parkinson's made it a panicked four minutes as my hands refused to obe.) Most surprisingly, I was asked at nearly the last second to step in as a baptismal sponsor for one of our elect. We are not so far apart in age, to call her my goddaughter would be a stretch, say instead I have another god-sister. 

So many memories of Easters past were layered over this Easter's mysteries. The smell of vinegar, newspapers on the table, dying eggs on Holy Saturday afternoon. Plotting where to hide them. Hunting up those eggs. The slightly sulfurous taste of hard boiled eggs. Of finding Easter baskets in the morning, the yellow Peeps bright against the green plastic twirls of "grass", fancy foil wrapped chocolate eggs nestled among the jelly beans, precisely counted out by my mother lest we squabble. 

An Easter fire kindled in the middle of the night, keeping vigil until the dawn, until at last the alleluias broke forth.

The Easter that wasn't quite. A basement vigil, a stiffening as we prayed for the dead that week. a bustling hotel dining room bursting with children in their best and indulgent grandparents and an Easter brunch that I could barely choke down.

"Holy Week," said one of the homilists a couple of weeks ago, "is more of a mood." Or I might say, moods. But Easter, too, is more than unalloyed joy -- at least on this side of heaven. It has its mood swings, too. We shouldn't be afraid to preach precarious Easters, to acknowledge to those mired in pain and grief and darkness that Christ, even risen and glorified as he is, still bears deep wounds. 

That glorious dawn, that burning star rising in the east? It was 4 degrees when I stood on the beach to watch it. I had to trust that eventually it would warm me. 

Holy Thursday: Fully Immersed

 

I am "preaching" Holy Thursday (Carthusian style — a long ago abbot of that most silent of orders told his confreres that they preach with their hands, by writing, not with their voices). Or maybe I should just say I am preaching today. Period.

Today begins the Triduum, a single liturgy unfolding over some 5o hours. We will come and go, but there will be only one collect — tonight — and one closing prayer — at the end of the Vigil. Holy Thursday is sometimes celebrated as the institution of the Sacrament of Holy Orders, sometimes as the institution of the Eucharist. But either of thsoe two characterizations seems to do justice to the depths of the mysteries at play in this liturgy. It's not an anniversary, it is a prophetic call to the baptized.

Last summer, when Give Us This Day's editor invited me to write the reflection for today, I will admit to being slightly intimidated. I have written many pieces for them over the years (50? I haven't really kept count), including for Christmas and other major feasts, but this day, these days, felt far more freighted. 

I sat down to write this with the powerful readings that direct our attention both inward — take this and drink — and outward — wash the feet of others, but my mind kept drifting to the unspoken, to what lies above and beside and below. Wade in with me to all that surrounds us, and that invites us to become what we receive, that calls us to be the Word made flesh. In the world today, where cruelty seems to be the watchword and mercy and justice are given short shrift, it seems all the more important to gather our strength and go forth as Christ commanded.

"After the starkness of Lent, with its stripped altars and veiled statues, it’s always a shock when I walk into the church on Holy Thursday. The altar is draped in crimson satin, the chapel where the Eucharist will repose is overflowing with flowers and candles. Tendrils of incense wind toward the ceiling, a gathering cloud of prayer above the nave...

Listen! Hear the Word that commands me to wash my neighbors’ feet, that whispers to me, “take up your cross,” that speaks my name and sends me out to make manifest the Good News. Verbum caro, panem verum, Verbo carnem éfficit. Become flesh in me."

The full reflection can be found here, along with a beautiful icon by Olga Bakhtina.

Do this in memory of me

(This is an edited and expanded version of a very brief reflection I gave at my parish's mission a few weeks ago. The movie is wrenching, and a difficult watch, but also beautiful.)

A few weeks ago I watched a movie on PBS. My oldest son had worked on the production, stage managing the play and then the film  and I wanted to see what he had done. The film, Remember This, was about listening, about listening deeply, and about seeing and what happens when we are deliberately blind to those around us. It told the story of Jan Karski, a Catholic and who worked with the Jewish Polish resistance during World War II, who told of the horrors they were enduring even before the US entered the war. Warning the world, warnings that went unheard. We could have stopped it, but we refused to hear. Forty years after the war, Karski said that he was still haunted by what he saw, and moreover that he wanted to be haunted by it. 

I want to tell you about a time when I saw something, and then chose to be blind to it. The experience haunts me, and I think, as Karski did, that I want it to haunt me. It was a bitterly cold December day and I was in a taxi outside Union Station in Washington DC on my way to give a talk. I looked out the window to see a man in a beige wool coat with a cup of coffee in one hand and a bagel in the other. As he crossed the street he tossed the half eaten bagel into the trashcan on the corner. I can still see the arc it made as it sailed through the air. And then I saw a man in a thin sweatshirt get off a nearby bench and reach into the trashcan, pick up the bagel and take a bite.

I was horror-struck. How hungry do you have to be to fish a half-eaten bagel out of the trashcan? I knew what I should've done, gotten out of that taxicab, and given him my hat, my gloves and my jacket — though in retrospect it was unlikely to fit — and taken him for breakfast. But I did none of these things. The traffic eased, the taxi drove on. If I saw Jesus on the street corner, how fast would I have bounded out of the car and said come have breakfast with me? The trouble is, I did see Jesus on the street corner, and chose to be blind. I still cringe when I think of it, and have mentally dubbed this experience the parable of the two men and the bagel.

When Karski walked the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, his companion kept repeating to him, “Remember this. Remember this." I want to hear as I walk the world Jesus repeating in my ear, "Remember this, remember me." I want to be haunted, so that in the end when Jesus asks me when I saw him, when I fed him and clothed him and cared for him, I can say, “on every street corner.”

In his homily last night for Holy Thursday our pastor asked us what we thought Jesus meant when he said, "do this in memory of me." Do we think he meant solely the celebration of the Eucharist? Or perhaps this yearly washing of the feet? Or is Jesus asking us to shape our whole lives in memory of everything that we have seen and heard of his life. So yes to the Eucharist, and yes to the washing of the feet. But also yes to the feeding of the hungry, and yes to the healing of the sick, and yes to the welcoming of those who the world pushes to the edges, unheard and unseen. And I thought again of Jan Karski, and those whispered words "remember this, remember this."

Passion, death and resurrection

I went to morning prayer at the parish today, followed by an all hands scramble to unload the flowers and get them out onto the altar for the decorating team coming later. As I headed out afterwards, my heart lifted at the sight of the trees in bloom, the fallen petals from the cherry tree stirring like confetti from a long past parade on the walk, the sounds of the birds. It was a beautiful morning in Bryn Mawr. The air held that spring warmth, just a hint of March’s cold damp still caught in the corners of the stone walls of the church. And just like that I was transported 35 years into the past.

I walked out of the hospital, perhaps around 8. It was a beautiful morning in Bryn Mawr. The air held that spring warmth, with just enough of March’s cold damp to remind you to be grateful that winter’s rigors were past. The birds sang, the trees were aflower, the daffodils across the way were brilliant. Who knew? I’d spent the night in an empty and dimly lit family lounge on the surgical floor and was blinded by all this light and beauty.

It was Holy Thursday, 35 years ago today. On Sunday I had thought I was prepared to wade into the Paschal mystery. Passion, death, and — without a doubt — resurrection. On Wednesday of Holy Week I would discover how woefully unprepared I was to face the Paschal mystery when it was pulled off the pages of scripture and poured out before me. Take this cup, and drink from it.

Tom was thirty. I had just turned 29. Not much older than my sons are now. We’d been married five years, finished our PhDs, moved, got jobs, bought a house, settled into a parish and a neighborhood. It was a very ordinary life, with grass to mow and walls to paint and futures to dream on. But we didn’t know about the bomb inside Tom’s chest. The ballooning artery that would eventually drive a channel into his heart, torn open as he swam laps in the college pool while I sat through the penultimate faculty meeting of the year. 

The Triduum for me would begin with a ride in a ambulance, everything left behind. I would stand by and watch as they resuscitated Tom in the ER. I would make phone calls. I would see that he was anointed with the holy oils. I would talk to him as they prepared him for surgery, though I do not think he could hear me. And I watched and prayed through the night. At 5 am, the surgeon would concede that the damage was beyond repair. At 7 am I would see him wrapped in white sheets, and make the sign of the cross on his forehead with my tears. And walk out of the hospital a few minutes later into that bruisingly beautiful spring day.

So on that Good Friday morning I picked out a casket, flanked by my shell-shocked in-laws and my distraught parents. On Holy Saturday morning I sat with the associate pastor to pick out readings and insist that Easter notwithstanding, there would be no music. No sung alleluia. No alleluia. It was too fast. Three days was not enough time for me to wrap my head around wrenching grief and recognize within it blazing resurrection. I grasp in some small way why the apostles couldn’t believe the women — it was too much of a shift in too little time. I am yet more floored by Mary Magdalene;s ability to see beyond the passion into the resurrection.

There would be a wake on Easter Sunday, a funeral on Easter Monday. Both achingly perfect spring days. Despite all the time that has passed, or perhaps because of it, I can never fail to see the passion and death swirling through the resurrection. It clouds our vision, tests our faith and stretches out our arms between heaven and earth. Like those perfect spring days, where there is still just enough winter lurking in the air to remind you of things unseen.

Mixed messaging

Thirty-two years ago, early on Holy Thursday morning, I staggered out the door of a hospital, my life entirely upended. Twelve hours before I'd been hatching plans for a late night stop at a diner for sandwiches after a faculty meeting with my husband, who'd come down to pick me up after an evening faculty meeting. Now I was a widow, faced with planning a funeral.

My sense of disequilibrium was extraordinary. The weather was warming, spring was firmly in place, yet I couldn't get warm enough, and nothing was in its place. Everything was blooming, the trees were greening, and I was picking out not plants for the gardens, but a casket. It was not the Holy Thursday I had planned.

I didn't go to Mass that night, though I can't tell you what I did, or even where I was. Still in Bryn Mawr, I think.

This Holy Thursday tastes a bit like that Holy Thursday, off-kilter, filled with mixed messages. It's the Triduum, the most sacred of times, and I'm at home, not at church. The Pope is saying Mass in a near empty St. Peter's. The days cry out for walks, the advice is to stay home and stay in. And I think of all those staggering under the virus. Those caring for the sick. The sick and the dying. This is not the Holy Thursday any of us planned.

Their words to the end of the world

Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. Psalm 19:4a

I went to Palm Sunday Mass in Detroit, or rather I opened a virtual window to the Jesuit community chapel in Detroit and immersed myself in their celebration.

As Mass began sirens could be heard screaming nearby, an apt hymn for these times.

Petals flew past my window, here in Bryn Mawr, laying a thick carpet of white across the back law. Palms before the Lord.

Have the audacity to hope, even from the depths of lamentation, the homilist pleaded with us. I hear Isaiah murmuring in the background: "Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, with the mountains quaking before you, while you wrought awesome deeds we could not hope for." 

The layers of voices whispering in my ears. "I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church." Here we are, if not together, one.

The intentions falling into the space at the bottom of my screen. Names and pleas scrolling past. Save us, O Lord.

Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord.  Thanks be to God.

God breathing in God

"...simply God breathing unto God in one unbroken line of praise. Alleluia. He is risen. Alleluia. We are risen. Alleluia. You will rise again. Alleluia, alleluia, an infinity of alleluias." — From "Alleluia" in Not By Bread Alone, 2018, Liturgical Press.

Listen to Easter.  Breathe in Easter. Alleluia.

All creation holds its breath

“All creation holds its breath, listening within me,
because, to hear you, I keep silent. ”

Anita Barrows.
Rilke's Book of Hours. Book of a Monastic Life, I,17

Stay here

I stood on the altar, wrapped in a veil of incense,  facing God made flesh in a church grown dark.  Flames flickered and people slowly gathered from the corners of the church. A procession formed, as the choir sang Tantum Ergo.  As the last light vanished down the center aisle, I led the way off the altar.

The cloud of unknowing. The cloud moving at night through the desert.  The puffs of smoke floating up before me to briefly flare in the light pouring out from the vestibule, and part before me. The measured pace of the music and the presider behind me, Christ's body cradled in his hands, guarded by this incense which surrounds us.

We reach the altar, passing through the silent crowd.  The presider incenses the altar and the blessed Sacrament. He kneels, and without thinking, I fall to one knee.

The choir shifts to a Taize refrain, "Stay with me, remain here with me, watch and pray, watch and pray." I'm thinking of Tom, of staying with him through the early hours of a Holy Thursday; of those who stayed with me; of staying with my mother in her last moments.  I hear the call stay with each other, to remain present to the person we really don't want to listen to, to the person who talks over and over us, to the ones who make us uncomfortable, or frighten us.  Stay here, with me.  Remain here with me. The music ebbs and flows around us. The church itself seems to breathe. Stay. Here.

This is surely liturgy as summit, we have gathered and done what we were asked to do with serene grace, with incense and music, and beauty all around. But this is also liturgy as the font of holiness, as discipline, as training ground.  Kneel here, so that you might know how to kneel before Christ in less recognizable or acceptable guises. Let your feet be washed, that you might know how to accept help, not just give it.

Fr. John leans over and murmurs, "Can you get up?"  My kneeling had not been in the plan, as we weren't sure my ankle would let me get up again without help.  But prayer is sometimes entirely in the body, and in this case it surely was, all those years of praying on my knees in front of the tabernacle and my body decided before my conscious mind had time to weigh in.  "Yes," I assured him. And gratefully, I had no trouble getting up.

The church gradually emptied, I headed out to the parking lot to go home and change and re-splint my ankle before returning for Compline at 10:30.  I get outside to find cars jamming the parking lot, caught in a tangle with traffic from the grocery store across the street and couldn't help but hum...stay with me.