Triduum- Good Friday

The Crucifixion, by Giotto (b. 1267 or 1277 - d. 1337 CE). Part of a cycle of frescoes showing the life of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ. Scrovegni Chapel (aka Arena Chapel) in Padua, northern Italy. From c. 1304 to c. 1315

"He mounted the Cross to free us from the fascination with nothingness, to free us from the fascination with appearances, with the ephemeral."

Servant of God Msgr. Luigi Giussani

Triduum- Holy Thursday

Christ Washing the Disciples' Feet, by Jacopo Tintoretto (1519-1594)

“Unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me.” (John 13:8)

"In his person, the deacon makes it clear that the liturgy must have concrete consequences in the world with all its needs, and that work in the world that is done in the spirit of charity has a spiritual dimension" Herbert Vorgrimler, Sacramental Theology, 270.

Monday of Holy Week

Readings: Isaiah 42:1-7; Psalm 27:1-3.13-14; John 12:1-11

Being nine months to the day before Christmas, normally today we would mark the observance of the Solemnity of the Annunciation. Because this year it falls during Holy Week, it is transferred to Monday, 8 April. The reason is transferred to 8 April instead of 1 April is that just as nothing, not even a Solemnity, trumps the days of Holy Week, nothing trumps the days of the Easter Octave.

Our Gospel for today occurs subsequent to the final Gospel for our celebration of the Scrutiny of the Elect. We find Jesus again at Bethany in the house of his dear friends, the siblings Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. As you might imagine, Lazarus gained notoriety because Jesus raised him after he was dead for four days. As you might imagine, many people were eager to get a glimpse of this man as well as the One who raised him.

Something easy to miss in the Church’s Gospel for the final Scrutiny is that when Jesus sets out for Bethany, which is in Judea, as opposed to his native Galilee, he does so over the strong objection of his disciples. Their objection was that many in Judea wanted to stone Jesus to death.

Overriding their objection and, no doubt, their fear, Jesus set out for Bethany. This is when Thomas, who we know as “Doubting Thomas” because of his refusal to believe the testimony of the other disciples that Jesus had risen from the dead, “said to his fellow disciples, ‘Let us also go to die with him.’”¹ This kind of upends the familiar view of Thomas as a skeptic, prone to disbelief.

It seems that not just Thomas, but all the disciples had some idea of what it might mean to die with Jesus. What they could understandably not understand was what it could mean for him to rise from the dead. Even now, it is very difficult to comprehend the meaning of Christ’s rising from the dead, let alone what it means to die and rise with him. As it pertains to the new life Christ seeks to give us, our failure to understand hampers us. While we still fear death, we don’t fear sin, which is deadly.

In our Gospel today, death hovers in the air. In response to Mary anointing him with costly oil, Jesus points to his own burial and tells his disciples “you do not always have me.”² This passage ends on a kind of ominous note, telling us that not only were the chief priests planning to kill Jesus, they were also planning to kill Lazarus because his coming back to life the cause of many to believe in Jesus.

Jesus' words “you do not always have me,” are illuminated by what Jesus says a few chapters later in Saint John’s Gospel, during the Last Supper Discourse. Here, he tells his disciples, “I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you.”³ Let’s not forget, that the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, is the mode of Christ’s resurrection presence in, among, and through us until he returns.

In the context of the Eucharist and, indeed, all the Church’s sacraments, the Holy Spirit is the active agent. For instance, it is by the Spirit’s power that the bread and wine become for us Christ’s body and blood. These, in turn, make us Christ’s Verum Corpus, his True Body.

The Eucharist, the Mass, is not just our memorial of Jesus’ passion and death but our Spirit-given way of participating in it. This is made explicit in the Memorial Acclamation: “We proclaim your Death, O Lord, and profess your Resurrection, until you come again.”⁴ This is what Holy Week, which culminates in the Sacred Triduum, our Christian High Holy Days, is all about.

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1 John 11:7-16.^↩
2 John 12:8.^↩
3 John 16:7.^↩
4 See Roman Missal. Order of Mass. Eucharistic Prayer I, sec. 91.^↩

Passion Sunday

Readings: Mark 11:1-10; Is 50:4-7; Ps 22:8-9.17-20.23-24; Phil 2:6-11; Mark 14:1-15-47

“Rather, he emptied himself.”¹ The Greek verb meaning “to empty” is kenosis. Using the words of an ancient Christian hymn, which we call “the Kenotic Hymn,” Saint Paul takes us into the very nature of God. In my view, the mistake made in a lot of contemporary preaching is that rather than unpack God’s word, we look for diversions around it, for ways to make it entertaining, which often has the effect of watering it down.

Maybe this is done out of concern that people find the theo-drama of creation and redemption boring in and of itself. But why employ a story, a poem, a song, an anecdote when scripture gives you a song, the words of which convey simply and beautifully God’s deepest nature? The words of this hymn were inspired, which is why they made it into the scriptures.

What the Kenotic Hymn reveals is that it is the very nature of God to empty himself. Creation itself is kenotic, a divine emptying. Creation can be described as the love of God- Father, Son, and Spirit- overflowing, emptying out but never empty. This, in turn, shows us that the Son did not act contrary to his divine nature when he emptied himself by becoming human in the form of a slave and finally submitting himself, in obedience to the Father, to an unjust, painful, and let’s not forget in the context of his time and culture, a very shameful death.

Contemplating the Lord’s passion, one question that arises is “could it have been otherwise?” Indeed, there was long-lasting a debate between Dominican and Jesuit theologians on this very point. It stands to reason that God could redeem creation in any way he chose. God could have made a world that did not need to be redeemed. We know these are true observations because they provoke more questions about the deepest mysteries of existence.

Suffice it to say, by subjecting himself to his passion and death, Jesus showed us the deepest nature of God. This is why our epistle reading constitutes the heart of our readings for Passion Sunday. This ancient hymn that Paul, under inspiration from the Holy Spirit, pulled into his letter to the Church in ancient Philippi, provides us with a key to help unlock the mystery of the Lord’s passion and death.

Another question the Lord’s passion and death prompts is, who killed Jesus? A true Christian can only answer- “I did.” Reflecting on Christ’s crucifixion, one of the great Cappadocian Fathers, Saint Gregory Nazianzen, echoed and then riffed on a note from the Kenotic Hymn: “For your sake, and because of your sin, Christ himself was regarded as a sinner… Worship him who was hung on the cross because of you.”² Let there be no anti-Semitic understanding of Jesus’ death. Theologically, to say “the Jews” killed Jesus is not only dangerous but sheer nonsense that mocks our crucified Lord to the point of blasphemy.

The Passion of Jesus found in Mark is reckoned to be the oldest part of that Gospel. At the center of this account is not Jesus’ death but his institution of the Holy Eucharist, which we will commemorate profoundly on Holy Thursday. We make this connection in each Mass when we sing the Memorial Acclamation: “Save us Savior of the world/For by your cross and resurrection/You have set us free.”³

In Mark’s account, of necessity, the Lord institutes the Eucharist before his death and resurrection whereas we celebrate it in the wake of these things having occurred. The Lord’s passion and death, along with his resurrection are very different from discreet historical events, even really significant ones. The Greek word anamnesis best describes what happens in the Mass. It means more than merely remembering, it is something like a participation in the events of our salvation across space and time through liturgy. In this respect, it anticipates a quantum understanding of reality.

Anamnesis plays a big role in Plato’s philosophy. This is perhaps best demonstrated in his dialogue with Meno.⁴ To prove his point that all learning is recollection (i.e., anamnesis), Socrates gives Meno’s unlearned slave a geometry problem and, by employing what we have come to call the “Socratic method,” which means engaging this unlearned man in dialogue, shows that even an unlearned slave, in an important sense, “knows” geometry.

Since liturgy is first theology, the most effective Christian catechesis is mystagogical. This means starting from someone’s experience and helping them connect their life to the liturgical celebration of the mystery of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection (i.e., the Paschal Mystery) through interaction and dialogue. Sadly, most of our catechesis remains merely didactic.

Even our liturgy for today, which requires us to stand not only for one but two Gospel readings, to process, short as it may be, along with all the regular parts of Mass can make you a little tired and maybe challenges your attention span, is mystagogical. In some small, liturgical, way, however, it brings us into the grueling nature of the Lord’s passion, which started and sundown and lasted until 3:00 pm the next day.

This is not to say that this in some way brings you into what Jesus himself experienced. Rather, by means of anamnesis, it is to hear him say what he said to Peter who, along with James and John, slept as he agonized in the garden:

[Scott], are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? Watch and pray that you may not undergo the test. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak⁵

This gets to something else Nazianzen pointed to in his sermon, in recognition and acceptance of the fact that Christ died because of you, “you must cease to sin.”⁶ Indeed, the flesh is weak, as those who have endeavored to keep a holy Lent have no doubt mystagogically (i.e., experientially) rediscovered!

Circling back to Jesus’ crucifixion as viewed through the lens of the Kenotic Hymn, it is vital to grasp that no one took the Lord’s life from him, not Judas, not the mob, not Pilate, not those who nailed him to the cross. He willingly laid it down and took it back up for you (and for me, and for those who nailed him to the cross, and for Pontius Pilate, and for the mob who clamored for his death, and for Barabbas, whose release was something, I am quite certain, with which Jesus concurred- perhaps even for Judas).

Just as it is easy to love humanity and hard to love that jackass over there, it is easy to believe in a very abstract way that Jesus died for the sins of the world. What I must grasp is that Jesus died for me out of love for me. Maybe this is something for each of us to reflect on between now and Good Friday when we venerate the Holy Cross after proclaiming together the Lord’s passion and death yet again. Perhaps, along with the Roman centurion who stood facing the cross on which Jesus hung, you too can say, as you face the cross, either again or perhaps for the first time, “Truly this man [is] the Son of God!”⁷

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1 Philippians 2:7.^↩
2 Liturgy of the Hours. Office of Readings. Second Reading for Saturday of the Fifth Week of Lent.^↩
3 Roman Missal. Order of Mass. Eucharistic Prayer I, sec. 91.^↩
4 See Plato, Meno.^↩
5 Mark 14:37-38.^↩
6 Liturgy of the Hours. Office of Readings. Second Reading for Saturday of the Fifth Week of Lent.^↩
7 Mark 15:39.^↩

Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent

Readings: Daniel 13:1-9.15-1719-30.33-62; Psalm 23:1-6; John 8:1-11

Whenever I hear Jesus’ encounter with the woman caught in adultery, my first question inevitably is, where is her partner? After all, you can’t commit adultery by yourself. He would be just as guilty and, depending on circumstances, if the episode of Susanna is any guide, maybe even more so.

I think our Psalm this evening, the beautiful and well-known Psalm twenty-three, provides us with a key to our readings for today. This is one of those Psalms that is often slightly off in many English translations. In the revised edition of the New American Bible, which is our American Catholic Bible, the first verse is translated quite accurately: “The LORD is my shepherd, there is nothing I lack.”¹

The first part of the last verse of Psalm 23, also needs a corrective translation. Often it is translated as “Only goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life.” A better translation is in the revised New American Bible: “Indeed, goodness and mercy will pursue me all the days of my life” (italics mine).²

The better translation is important because it gives us a more accurate insight into God’s very nature. God, who is Goodness and who is Mercy, doesn’t just passively follow you. God actively pursues you! This is what a good shepherd does: seek out the lost sheep.

Tonight, we hear about two women. One, Susanna, is innocent, the unwitting victim of wicked men, while the other, who remains nameless, is by all indications guilty, caught in the very act of adultery.

The good news we can take away from this is that God not only vindicates the innocent. Through Jesus Christ, even the guilty can be vindicated. God pursues you with no less gentleness, kindness, and mercy than he pursued the woman caught in adultery, arriving on the scene just in time.

While apostolic credentials of the pericope of Jesus' encounter with the woman taken in adultery is not in question, it was not clear to the Church for some time in which Gospel it belonged. It fits well in John’s Gospel because, like the three Gospels we proclaim for the Scrutiny of the Elect, you can put yourself in the place of the Samaritan woman whom Jesus knew everything about and desired to save all the more, of the blind to whom the Lord gave sight, and Lazarus, who he raised from the dead, it is easy to be the woman caught in adultery.

Of course, this is not to accuse everyone of adultery. It is merely to point out that we’re all sinners in need of God’s forgiveness. As we read in 1 John: “If we say, ‘We are without sin,’ we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”³ Through Jesus Christ, by the Holy Spirit’s power, God is eager to forgive you. This is what the woman’s adulterous partner ran away from.

What is amazing is that is precisely through our lack that Christ gives us everything. He makes our fall the source of redemption. This may be his greatest miracle of all!

So badly does God want to forgive you that the first gift the Risen Lord gave to his Church after his resurrection was the Sacrament of Penance.⁴ It is through this sacrament you are reconciled to God and to the Church. It is through this sacrament that Christ says, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on do not sin any more.”⁵

Jesus is always eager to meet you wherever you are. But he is not content to leave you where he found you. The Good Shepherd pursues you through the dark valley, accompanies you through (if you let him), sets a table before you, anoints your head with oil, and fills your cup to overflowing. Jesus+nothing=everything.

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1 Psalm 23:1.^↩
2 Psalm 23:6.^↩
3 1 John 1:8.^↩
4 John 8:11.^↩
5 John 20:19-23.^↩

Fifth Sunday of Lent- Third Scrutiny

Readings: Ezekiel 37:12-14; Psalm 130:1-8; Romans 8:8-11; John 11:1-45

As English speakers, we tend to conflate “flesh” with “body.” Such a conflation leads to a perversion in the Christian understanding of the human person. This can have devastating practical consequences for those seeking to live a Christian life.

In Koine Greek, the language in which our uniquely Christian scriptures (i.e., the New Testament) were written, there are distinct words for “body” and “flesh”- soma and sarx, which do not usually refer to the same thing, especially in the authentic writings of Saint Paul.

Soma is the Greek word for “body,” while sarx is the Greek word Paul uses in our reading from Romans that translates as “flesh.” This is more than just a “Gee whiz” bit of information. Christianity is rooted in the Incarnation of God’s only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, who is himself “true God from true God.” To be incarnated is to be embodied, to have a body.

Far from rejecting the body, which is gnostic and antithetical to Christianity, we rejoice in our bodies and in all physical creation, which sacramentally points us to God. Through this Eucharist, for example, we offer ourselves, body, blood, soul, and humanity to the Father, through Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Getting back to our reading from Romans, our body is dead to sin because, by God’s sanctifying grace given us through the sacraments, we are no longer in the flesh but live in the spirit because of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Recall here the words of Jesus to the Samaritan woman from the Gospel for the First Scrutiny:

the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him¹

Here is a scrutinizing question: are you determined to worship God in Spirit and truth? Worshipping God in Spirit means worshipping God with your body, which, in its negative aspect, means not using your body to pursue fleshly desires. This is why, as Christians, we practice spiritual disciplines, which you perform with your body.

Several chapters on in his Letter to the Romans, the apostle exhorts the Christians of ancient Rome:

to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship. Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect²

Paul positively describes what it means to live in the spirit. Again, becoming Catholic as an adult should not amount merely to the adoption of a new moniker indicating your religious preference. It is the beginning of your new life, which includes a way of life, one in which you seek to live like Christ in an increasingly indifferent world, a world governed by adherence to the hedonistically existential axiom of getting all you can while you can.

If the body weren’t central to Christianity, then rather than raise his dead friend Lazarus, Jesus would’ve consoled his sisters with something like, “He’s in heaven with God now.” Well, if you’ve ever lost anyone you loved and to whom you were very close, you know such words are often cold comfort, particularly when uttered while standing at the edge of their grave, a place where grief and doubt abound, which are the conditions for hope as opposed to mere optimism.

After complaining to Jesus that Lazarus would not have died had he come earlier, Martha is not terribly consoled by his assurance “Your brother will rise.” You can almost hear the terseness of her response: “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.”³ So much for pious platitudes!

Jesus then leads Martha deeper by asking if she believes that he, Jesus, is “the resurrection and the life” and that by believing this she will never die. To which she responds with a profound confession of faith. Similarly, Mary, the contemplative sister, also tells Jesus that if he had come sooner Lazarus would not have died.⁴

Seeing Mary’s grief, the Lord is affected and weeps.⁵ He, too, loves Lazarus as well as Martha and Mary. As Jesus shows signs of grief, some in the crowd ask in a vein similar to the sisters: “Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man have done something so that this man would not have died?”⁶ Then, after calling for the removal of the stone that sealed the tomb, and praying to the Father, Jesus, in a loud voice, calls Lazarus forth. He emerges alive.

This Gospel is the culmination of the scrutinies because just as you are the woman at the well to whom Jesus revealed his true identity by knowing everything about her and loving her anyway, just as you are the blind man to whom Jesus gave true sight by healing him and showing him who he is, you are Lazarus called forth from the grave.

Jesus Christ has conquered death. This is the Good News! Christus resurrexit, quia Deus caritas est!⁷ Here’s another scrutinizing question: Do you believe this in the way Martha professed it? As a Christian, you must confess, "I believe... in the resurrection of the body."⁸

As then-Father/Professor Josef Ratzinger observed quite a few years ago:

This life is not everything. There is an eternity. Today, it is very unmodern to say this, even in theology. To speak of life beyond death looks like a flight from life here on earth. But what if it is true? Can one simply pass it by? Can one dismiss it as mere consolation? Is it not precisely this reality that bestows on life its seriousness, its freedom, its hope?⁹

Christ will demonstrate his mastery over death again when you die, are buried, and rise to new life through the waters of baptism. This is no less a miracle than the one in today’s Gospel or the one from our Gospel for the Second Scrutiny. Eternal life is not the life that begins after physical death. Eternal life begins at baptism. Eternal life, which is life in the Spirit, is now and forever. La vida eterna es por los siglos de los siglos.

My dear Elect, Jesus Christ calls you forth from the grave of sin, the grave of unbelief, the grave of indifference toward life, from the gray and nagging dissatisfaction of life in the flesh, a life in which too much is never enough, a life that does not satisfy because it cannot satisfy. Fleshly life cannot satisfy because God made you for himself and your heart is restless until it rests in him.¹⁰ And so, once again,

Awake, O sleeper,
and arise from the dead,
and Christ will give you light¹¹

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1 John 4:23-24.^↩
2 Romans 12:1-2.^↩
3 John 11:23-24.^↩
4 John 11:25-27.32-37.^↩
5 John 11:35.^↩
6 John 11:37.^↩
7 Pope Benedict XVI. Easter Urbi et Orbi Message. 16 April 2006.^↩
8 Apostles Creed, Article 11.^↩
9 Robert Cardinal Sarah. He Gave Us So Much: A Tribute to Benedict XVI. Trans. Michael J. Miller, 130-131.^↩
10 Saint Augustine. Confessions. Book I, Chapter 1, Section 1.^↩
11 Ephesians 5:14.^↩

Monday of the Fourth Week of Lent

Readings: Isaiah 65:17-21; Ps 30:2.4-6.11-13; John 4:43-54

We too quickly become accustomed to a debased Christianity, making it a philosophy of life, a culture, or, worse yet, a politics, which can help but be disengaged from Jesus’ teachings in one way or another. We’ve reached that point in Lent where we are confronted with and by Jesus through the readings, particularly the Gospel readings.

Our Gospel today immediately follows Jesus’ encounter with the woman in Samaria. At the end of that encounter, at the urging of the inhabitants of the Samaritan village, he stayed with them for two days.¹

According to John’s itinerary, Jesus passes through Samaria as he returns to his native Galilee from a trip to Jerusalem. Because Jesus performed no miracles for his fellow Galileans before his journey to Jerusalem but wowed the Galileans who were also in Jerusalem during a major feast with signs and wonders, they gleefully welcomed him back as he entered Cana of Galilee, where, the inspired author reminds us, he turned water into wine at a wedding feast.

In the fourth Gospel, the miracle at the wedding feast in Cana marks the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. Of course, this miracle is the second Luminous Mystery of the Holy Rosary. This mystery’s fruit is to Jesus through Mary.

If you remember, the Lord was reluctant to do something to help at the wedding when all the wine had been consumed. He only intervened because of his mother. She forced the issue by telling the servants, with reference to her Son- “Do whatever he tells you.”²

In today’s Gospel, the lack of belief on the part of his fellow Galileans, indicated by their fickleness, was seen by Jesus for what it was: bad faith, which is no faith at all. Far from being elated by his triumphant return, he seems to be not disappointed as much as disgusted.

Jesus’ disgust is brought into bold relief when his response to the royal official’s request that he go with him to Capernaum to heal his son, who was close to death, was: “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.”³ Nonetheless, in his mercy, he healed the man's son, saving him from death.

The Lord’s response stands in contrast to a common misconception about him. This misconception is something like the “Buddy Christ” from Kevin Smith’s movie Dogma. In this film, Buddy Christ is the central feature in what is just an ad campaign, as so many “evangelization” programs tend to be. The name of the campaign is “Catholicism Wow!”

Cardinal Glick, the driving force behind the ad campaign, played by the late George Carlin, notes that because too many people find the crucifix “wholly depressing,” the Church is retiring it and replacing it with the Buddy Christ. It is a Sacred Heart statue featuring a smiling and winking Jesus, who points at onlookers with one hand while giving the thumbs-up sign with the other.

As we profess in the Creed, Jesus is “true God from true God.” His divinity is made manifest through his humanity. In his person, humanity and divinity are wholly integrated, making him “the perfect man.”⁴ It is through his very person, in which divinity and humanity perfectly cohere, that he seeks to restore our likeness to God, which is lost through sin.⁵ Another word for this is “divinization.”

Because we are not like God, which means we are not yet fully human, we sometimes find Jesus’ words and disposition puzzling. But we can be quite sure that while he certainly performed signs and wonders, Jesus did not come to launch a divine shock and awe campaign that we could call “God Wow!”

Our Gospel today is a variation on theme which comes to full fruition at the end of the Gospel According to Saint John, when “doubting” Thomas can see and touch the risen Lord: “Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”⁶

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1 See John 4:1-42..^↩
2 See John 2:1-12.^↩
3 John 4:48.^↩
4 Second Vatican Council. Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World [Gaudium et Spes], sec. 22.^↩
5 Ibid.^↩
6 John 20:29.^↩