The Easter Itinerancy

(An old post updated)

Every year on this holy night I reflect on the grace of itinerancy that the Holy Spirit has given me; only twice in my whole baptism have I been in the same place for the Easter Vigil for more than two years in a row. When I think about all the places I've been for the Vigil, it puts me in awe of God and in a state of gratitude for my journey.

Here's my Easter Vigil history:

• 2026: Sacred Heart, Yonkers, NY (concelebrant)
• 2025: Sacred Heart, Yonkers, NY (celebrant)
• 2024: Sacred Heart, Yonkers, NY (concelebrant; first time in charge of RCIA)
• 2023: Annunciation, Crestwood, Yonkers, NY (concelebrant)
• 2022: Our Lady of Sorrows, White Plains, NY
• 2021: Our Lady of Sorrows, White Plains, NY
  
  
• 2020: (COVID-19 pandemic, prayed what is provided in the Liturgy of the Hours for qui sollemni Vigilæ paschali non interfuerunt)
• 2019: Basilica of St. Teresa of Ávila, Rome
• 2018: Basilica of St. Camillo de Lellis, Rome
• 2017: Basilica of St. Camillo de Lellis, Rome (in the 25th year of my baptism)
• 2016: Capuchin General Curia, Rome (concelebrant)
  
  
  

Out of the Well

"Which of you, having a son or an ox that fallen into a well, will not immediately pull him out on a sabbath day?" (Luke 14:5)

That's us, poor children of God and his dumb creatures who have fallen.

And just as the answer to the question is everyone, so Jesus does it too, drawing us up from our fallenness through the well of baptism, and on a sabbath day too, the Great Sabbath, Holy Saturday,  when he descends into the hell we have provided for ourselves with our sins and draws up our humanity, united to his, as the New Creation of which his Resurrection is the dawn.

Sabbato Sancto

I have always loved Holy Saturday. The emptiness of it just speaks to my praying heart. "There is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep," says the homily in the Office of Readings today. Jesus Christ sleeps in our death. As both a good Jew in his humanity and as the one God in his divinity, he rests on the Sabbath, on this last day.

I used to notice the emptiness of this day most strongly when I was a parish priest. There was hardly anything to do, that is, apart from decorating, rehearsals, and set-up. No morning Mass, no possibility of a wedding or funeral, not even much to eat given that I try to accept the Church's exhortation to keep the paschal fast. Just prayer, and the cauterizing quiet of contemplation:

"What a holocaust takes place in this steady burning to ashes of old worn-out words, cliches, slogans, rationalizations! The worst of it is that even apparently holy conceptions are consumed along with all the rest. It is a terrible breaking and burning of idols, a purification of the sanctuary, so that no graven thing my occupy the place that God has commanded be left empty: the center, the existential altar which simply 'is.'" (Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 13)

Let us rest with the Lord in the renovating emptiness of this Sabbath. In it we sit, once again for the first time, in the last day of the old creation. As this last day ends with the setting of the sun, let us go with quiet and open hearts to the great Vigil that opens the new creation. Let us hear the effective word of God calling us forth from the water as his new creatures, and let us know our renovated hearts bursting with the Easter slogan, sursum sunt quaerite, 'seek the things that are above.'

Do I have to go to the Triduum?

Somebody asked me: do I have to attend the services of the Triduum?

The short answer, as it seems to me: no.

Of course there is the Sunday obligation, which certainly includes Easter Sunday. I would maintain that the Mass of Easter Sunday is part of the Triduum, which begins with either Evening Prayer or the Mass of the Lord's Supper on Thursday and spans the three days until Evening Prayer on Sunday. In my Catholic life before priestly ordination, after which such a question became moot, I had always presumed that assistance at the Easter Vigil satisfies the Sunday obligation.

I guess the liturgies of the Triduum are like Ash Wednesday; they're not 'holy days of obligation' but just things that one does. But I don't think they are obligatory in any sense. In fact, the Liturgy of the Hours would even seem to suggest this; because the Mass of the Lord's Supper and the liturgy of the Passion replace Evening Prayer on Thursday and Friday, and the Easter Vigil replaces Night Prayer for Saturday and the Office of Readings for Sunday (I daresay that this is perhaps the only day of the year that some clerics thereby 'fulfill' their obligation to recite the Office of Readings. And why not? If you're only going to say your prayers once a year, what better day than Easter Sunday?), the rubrics are clear that those who do not assist at these liturgies are supposed to pray these Hours. In other words, the Liturgy of the Hours, in providing for those who do not attend the special services, suggests that such is a legitimate possibility.

Even more, though these liturgies are at the heart of the whole liturgical year for us, there could be fine reasons to opt out. The Mass of the Lord's Supper, though it is one of the most deep and beautiful liturgies of the whole Roman rite, can be especially prone to misplaced innovation and liturgical abuse. Somebody who is sensitive to such things might stay away just for the sake of keeping his recollection. On Friday, of course, there are many different prayers and devotions available in addition to the official liturgy. Someone might prefer something else, though the reception of Holy Communion is not to be dismissed.

But how about the Easter Vigil? Do you have to go? Do you have to feel guilty if you would rather not? Well, the Vigil is certainly a spectacular liturgy, and one that holds within itself a superabundance of symbol, meaning, and encouragement. But it can also be very long. Also, because of its intricate nature, it can be given to distracting liturgical disasters. (Everyone has stories. Sitting down for a drink after one Easter Vigil when I was a parish priest, my pastor said, "Well, let's just say this and call it a night: at least the church didn't burn down.") The Easter Vigil can be somewhat focused on the Elect (rightly) and those who are candidates for some combination of Eucharist, Confirmation, and full communion (wrongly) and sometimes these folks aren't known well to the average parishioner. This isn't a good thing, but it's often the situation on the ground. I remember one Easter Vigil before I was in religious life. I showed up to church early so I could pray my private preparation. Ahead of me in the front row were those to be initiated. I had never seen any of them before, and nor did I see any of them at Mass ever again. Over their nice clothes, each was wearing a lovely new brown scapular. I remember thinking it odd that someone should have be enrolled in the brown scapular--if indeed they were properly enrolled--before being baptized. (It's to be worn under the clothing in any case.) In this sense the Easter Vigil can seem like a graduation liturgy for a bunch of people one doesn't even know. And perhaps there are other reasons why someone might decide not to go.

So I guess that's my long answer. Assist and pray through these amazing liturgies as best you can. But if there's some reason why you would prefer not to, don't worry about it. Pray your prayers on your own, including the Liturgy of the Hours if that's something you do or are supposed to do. In your charity, pray for me, as I will in these days for all who support me in the little outlet of this blog.

In Praise of Shallow Praise

(I know I promised a post on the lovely and mysterious Mary of Bethany, but another reflection came to me on my walk to the Poor Clares this morning. I'll get to Mary. Along with Mary Magdalene and the woman with the hemorrhages, she's one of my great models of prayer from the gospels.)

Holy Week always gets me thinking of and grateful for the itinerancy of my Christian life. I think of all the places I've been for Easter Vigils over the years. On my walk to the nuns' this morning I was just reflecting back through all of these and praying for the various communities, places, and parishes. But my attention stopped on one Holy Saturday in particular. It was twenty years ago on April 18, 1992, toward the end of the second semester of my sophomore year of college, and the last Holy Saturday before I became a Catholic.

For his own purposes, God leaves me with a pretty vivid memory of that night. When I think of it, it reminds me how shallow my conversion really was, and how defective my intentions. Not that recalling this should be an occasion for self-pity, even when I notice how shallow and defective it all remains to this day--such is the devil's agenda!--but rather a moment to recall my own poverty and the God who calls us in his love for our souls and not on account of our being worthy or even interesting.

It had been a pretty drunken semester. My girlfriend, who was one of those well-behaved sort of girls, was away in Florence for the semester studying art, and I was thus liberated from her moderating influence. My friends and I were settling into the identity of philosophy majors, and were quite convinced that we were as smart as could be. It was all a lot of fun. Toward the end of the semester, and certainly by Easter, I had more or less decided that I wanted to become a Catholic. Soon I would tell the priest who was on campus two afternoons a week of my decision. He would give me a note of introduction to the local pastor. It was Ascension Thursday when I went. The pastor handed me over to the permanent deacon, who would give me my 'convert instructions' and then baptize me at the end of that summer. Yes, I came into the Church like converts did before the restoration of the catechumenate and the RCIA. Like St. Paul, I was born out of order. But all of that was 'not yet' just a few weeks before on Holy Saturday.

I remember that there were posters around campus listing the various Holy Week services. They were white with the lettering in purple. I studied the notice, but it didn't occur to me to make plans to attend anything. It was not something I 'had to do' yet. This idea I had of becoming a Catholic Christian; it was mostly in my head. It was concepts. It wasn't yet prayer and it certainly wasn't anything related to a praying community. But God was there, calling me. In his self-emptying he wills to make a throne out of even our inadequate ideas of him. That's the mystery of the Cross as it comes to live in our wills. God is willing to die in our defective and incomplete religion in order to deliver us to the pure faith of prayer.

On Holy Saturday night, the Elect were all around me, all over the world, receiving the sacramental initiation for which I also hoped. But I wasn't there praying with them. Even though I had vaingloriously begun to call myself a catechumen, it didn't even occur to me to attend an Easter Vigil. Instead, I was drinking with my friends. I was at a show of campus bands and having a great time. In the moshing I jammed one of my thumbs. I think I probably broke it a little bit. It hurt for a long time. It was well past midnight when the music was over and I found myself alone. I was hungry. So I walked off campus, crossed Route 32, and went to the glorious mess of alternativity that was Abbey House, the cooperative living dormitory. I cooked a hamburger in their kitchen, thinking that it was late enough at night not to be caught in the theft.

By the time I got back to campus and my own dormitory, Smith, it was going on four o'clock. Noticing one of the Holy Week posters on the walk back, I saw again that there was to be a Protestant service at sunrise. Since I was already up, I thought, I may as well go. After all, I was going to be a Christian, and so Easter ought to mean something. Arriving on the grass outside the chapel I met the Protestants. I got to talking with one student I knew because she had once tried to start a relationship by asking me to help her with her linear algebra homework. She was telling me about how she had been dreaming about the Resurrection when her alarm went off and she joked and said something like, 'Get out of the way Jesus, I have to turn off the alarm clock.' I remember thinking that she was corny. When I think of that, I am ashamed.

I sang and prayed with them. When a cup of wine was passed around, I had a hard time holding it because of my injured thumb. It's so funny to think of that twenty years later, when I daily gasp chalices of the Precious Blood without using my thumbs at all, como Dios manda. The back of the worship aid had a stylized image of the women at the tomb with a triple alleluia written below them. I cut it out and put it on my dorm room door.

After the service I didn't stay for the collation that followed. To be honest, I don't remember anything after that. I suppose I went back to my room and went to sleep for a little while, until my friends were ready for that great ritual of hungover grease and caffeine ingestion, the Sunday brunch at Harris refectory.

The Lord calls to us just where we are. He is willing to suffer in our shallow praise and defective intentions in order to save us from them. That's the sublime humility of the Cross, the humble sublimity of his Presence in the Eucharist. His power is revealed in our weakness. In that spirit, I boast of my shallow and defective conversion.

Ash Wednesday: Hypocrisy, Necrosis, Mimesis

Another Ash Wednesday, and with it the hope for a new beginning of the Christian life. This is my twentieth Lent already, and since I was baptized when I was twenty years old, that means that in another year or so--should God grant me to live that long--I'll be able to start saying that I've spent most of my life on earth as a Christian.

I'm thoroughly convinced of my own interpretation of Ash Wednesday, namely that it is public, communal, purposeful disregard for the gospel that serves to confess to God and to each other that this is who we have been all along, people who have heard the good news and received the divine invitation, but have not yet surrendered, not yet lived gospel lives. What else could it mean to proclaim the gospel that tells us to wash our faces when we fast and not to perform righteous deeds that they may be seen, and then eagerly line up to have someone put dirt on our faces with great solemnity and then walk around like that all day? I wear the ashes because I want everyone to know--and to remember myself--that I am a gospel-disregarding hypocrite. But within that confession is the hope for a new beginning, to do penance, to amend my life, to repent and believe the gospel once again.

Nevertheless, as attached I am to this understanding, there are other things going on with Ash Wednesday. One of them I didn't start to notice until I was a parish priest and was baptizing babies with some regularity. At the beginning of the celebration of infant baptism, the families are met at the entrance to the church. As the names of the babies are called out, the minister of baptism makes the sign of the cross on the forehead of each, inviting parents and godparents to do the same. With this, the minister announces that the Christian community welcomes her new member with joy, and that the child is 'claimed' for Christ.

It strikes me that this signing at the beginning of the celebration of baptism is the same ritual gesture that is used to give ashes. (I concede that this is not the custom everywhere.) When I receive the little cross of ashes, I think of how it relates to the sign of the cross I too received at the beginning of the ceremony of my own baptism. (Despite being twenty years old at the time, I was baptized according to the rite for children, long story.) It's as if that first sign of the cross, full of hope and joy, is now revealed again as necrotic, my first fervor having been burnt up and being nothing but weightless ash. The baptism that was to give me new life by burying me with Christ in his death has been foiled by the life of death I insist upon for myself with my sins and distraction. On Ash Wednesday I admit this, confess it to God, myself, and everyone else, and hope for a new beginning that I might prepare myself for the renewal of my baptism at the great Vigil of Easter.

Still another angle that comes to me on Ash Wednesday is its relationship to Holy Thursday. It strikes me that the ritual by which we begin the journey of Lent, Ash Wednesday,  is parallel to the ritual by which Lent gives way to the days of the Paschal Triduum, the Mass of the Lord's Supper. On Ash Wednesday we insist on not following Jesus' practical advice on how to fast, but on Holy Thursday, in the washing of the feet, we take great pains to act out a gospel commandment that can easily be taken figuratively. We begin Lent with a direct violation of the gospel on Ash Wednesday and conclude with direct imitation on Holy Thursday.  The humble service of the washing of the feet is the antidote to the hypocrisy of the dirtying of the heads.

As we begin this Lent, may we all come to know Jesus anew. In his saving humility, he washes the feet of those who don't know how to wash their faces.

This Is The Night

Tonight it all happens. This is the night, as we proclaim in the Exsultet.

Tonight the darkness becomes Light. The night becomes the Day. The long history of sin, in its pointlessness, hurt, violence, and meaninglessness, is overwhelmed by a Joy so creative that it makes a New Creation and a Creativity so joyful that it has no room to remember the misery, anxiety, and depression we have insisted upon for ourselves with our own sins.

Tonight the end becomes the beginning, the omega and the alpha are drawn together into one: The Sabbath of rest which concludes the creation becomes the dawn of the first day resounding with the announcement of the Resurrection inaugurating the New Heavens and the New Earth: "Let there be Light."

When is the Triduum?

Just a little Holy Week post to indulge my inner rubrician against certain mistakes one sometimes encounters in these days.

The three days of the Paschal Triduum are not Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, but Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, provided we imagine these in the biblical sense of a day beginning with the evening.

Therefore, the Triduum begins with either the Evening Mass of the Lord's Supper or Evening Prayer on Thursday evening, and ends three days later after Evening Prayer II of Easter Sunday.

The Mass of the Lord's Supper on Thursday and the celebration of the Lord's Passion on Friday take the place of Evening Prayer on these days.

The Easter Vigil takes the place of Night Prayer for Saturday and the Office of Readings for Sunday, giving some idea of when the Church imagines the Vigil to be celebrated, contrary to the usual pastoral practice. This means, against what one hears sometimes, that there is such a thing as Evening Prayer I of Easter Sunday, even for those who will participate in the Easter Vigil.

Happy Triduum, everyone, especially you Elect. I've been praying for you this whole Lent. It's a grand adventure you begin in these days.

Baptismal Candles

Today I was baptizing a toddler. While I was putting stuff away after the ceremony, I started to think about the little candle given to each newly baptized. Wouldn't it be cool if everyone held on to those candles devoutly, and then used them as their light at the beginning of the Easter Vigil each year? After all, it's the same candle anyway, on the spiritual level. It would be neat to see the ones that were burned down from so many years of living their baptism.

Then I had another thought: when couples want to do the whole wedding candle or unity candle thing for their weddings, I should try to make them produce their baptismal candles for this purpose!

Explicit Triduum Paschale

Let it never be said that I am so into sacramental liceity or liturgical decorum that I'm afraid to have a little fun, especially when it makes for hilarious catechesis.

After greeting the people after the last Mass this morning, I was walking back to the sacristy. Examining the baptismal font and its decorative waterfall were two little kids, a brother and sister in the range of four or five years old. The sister had a little baby doll under her arm.

I asked her if her baby had been baptized. She replied that she wasn't sure. When I asked her if she would like for her baby to be baptized, she wasn't sure about that either, but accepted it with the encouragement of the "grandparents." (How much like real life!) After extracting from the brother some consent to his godfatherhood, I baptized the "baby" with just a tiny bit of water and wholly defective intention. By this time the little girl was getting into it, and smiled as I charged her with her new duties of Christian motherhood.

My First Born

I didn't anticipate this, but this afternoon I have found myself somewhat emotional as I reflect on the baptism of my first catechumen tonight. I've done and witnessed plenty of baptisms, of course, but this is the first time that I myself have prepared and catechized someone according to the RCIA, praying and reflecting with her over the last two years.

I'm proud of her faithfulness to the program and desire for baptism. But I'm also anxious. Did I cover enough to make a foundation for a Catholic lifetime?

There's a kind of bittersweet letting-go in all of it. I have succeeded. In a few hours my ministry will have brought a newborn Christian into this world, a living, fresh sign of the power of Resurrection. At the thought of that I'm overcome with the humble tears of my unworthiness as I reflect on the searing mercy of God that has made shallow and distracted old me into a steward of the deepest of Mysteries. As I present her to her pastor to be baptized, there's a kind of wholesome grief about it too, of letting go of a child who is about to become an adult in the spiritual order, and whom I now set free into the confounding and delightful economies of Grace within which we stumble on our way through the pilgrimage of this life.

May God delight in his neophyte.

Bareness and Solitude

Here, as in most places I suspect, the Chrism Mass is celebrated earlier in Holy Week. This makes Holy Thursday the day of one Mass.

It might not seem like a remarkable thing, but for me one of the real jarring experiences of the priestly ministry has been the frequency of celebrating Eucharist. Fortunately in my religious life prior to priesthood, either by choice or compulsion, I more or less fulfilled the injunction that religious ought to make "every effort" to assist at Mass daily. But the one Mass a day which priests are also "earnestly invited" to offer is only the beginning at this point.

Where I work there are seventeen Masses a week on the regular schedule. Add to that the weekly average of 1.5 funerals and half a wedding or other special event, and we're up to nineteen. We are two priests on staff who enjoy the help of a retired priest who offers Mass four times a week. That leaves fifteen Masses a week to be offered by two priests. Give each a day off, and that's only 1.25 Masses to be said per day. Not so bad. Our retired brother spends about ten percent of the year away, so at these times the figure goes up to 1.6 Masses per day per priest. Because things are rarely so even, there are sometimes problems, given that we only have faculties to offer Mass twice on weekdays and thrice on Sundays.

I do not mean this as a complaint. It is my honor, joy, and redemption to offer Mass for the people I serve and for the world. I am ready to do so each day at the limit of the faculties the Church gives me, should there be pastoral necessity or even utility. However, it is a very different sort of eucharistic life than before ordination.

To me it becomes the most remarkable feature of the Triduum. Given this life in which Masses are multiplied--we often have three in a row in the morning, early and later daily Mass, then funeral--the Triduum seems so bare of Eucharist. From Thursday morning to Saturday night, one only has Mass twice. At any other time of the year, at least in my job, it would be nothing unusual to celebrate Mass twice or three times as much during the same period of the week. It brings me a new appreciation for the Triduum : it's bareness and eucharistic solitude.

Why Did You Miss Mass?

I make a conscious effort only to ask questions of penitents when it is really necessary, but this is one I ask a lot. I do it because missing Sunday Mass is a frequently confessed sin, but it is also one in which culpability is very often reduced by circumstances such as advanced age, infirmity, child care, etc.

It's a sin that I have pretty much avoided altogether in my own Catholic life, but whenever I ask someone why they missed Mass I feel a little bit of amused gratitude inside as I remember the one time a confessor asked it of me, and the whole confession ended up with the priest laughing out loud.

It all started in Assisi. In the spring of 1993 I was alleged to be studying philosophy at University College Galway, on the west coast of Ireland. We had a whole month off for Easter, so I and this other kid decided to wander around on the continent. We had no plan and no set itinerary. To this day I can only piece together where we were by liturgical time, since we always went to Mass on Sundays. I know that on the fifth Sunday of Lent we were in Paris. It's a miracle of Providence that we were able to get to Mass on time in Paris, as it was only from a chance comment from a guy with whom we were playing hacky sack on the grass in front of Les Invalides that we knew daylight savings time had started. A week later, on Passion Sunday, we were in Prague. I'll never forget it. Listening to St. Matthew's Passion read in Czech by one priest all by himself was pretty tiring. By the time of the Triduum we were in Verona; I remember going to the Vigil there and sharing my hand missal with a tall American girl. Catholic player I was, in those days. By the second Sunday of Easter, having split up with my traveling companion, I was alone in Assisi. It was there that I ran out of money.

Assisi was to be the last stop anyway. School had already started again back in Ireland, and it was time to think about getting home. Now there was a lot of random religious stuff I wanted to pick up in Assisi, so I counted out what money I had left to make sure I would have enough for the return trip and for my lodging bill at the pilgrim's house where I was staying. I calculated--or so I thought--how much I had left for religious articles, books, etc., and went out shopping. Unfortunately, I must have counted wrong, and found that after I had settled up with sister guest mistress, I was broke. All I had was my European train pass and a few Italian coins. I spent the last little bit on some fruit, and started to make my way back to Galway.

I remember that the train from Assisi to Florence left at 12:16. It was a Friday afternoon. So there I was, sitting with my backpack in the plaza of Santa Maria degli Angeli waiting around for midday. A gypsy woman came up to me and asked for money. What a joy it was to honestly say that I didn't have any! She said something in indignation and then went behind the bushes and urinated loudly. I have always wondered if this was supposed to be insulting to me. Then she came back. For reasons I have never been able to guess, she gave me a holy card of Our Lady of the Angels. I've kept it in my wallet ever since. It's been through the wash a few times, but has held up.

So on Friday afternoon at 12:16, I began my destitute journey from Assisi to Galway. Later that afternoon I changed trains in Florence and was on my way to Milan. I spent Friday night on the overnight train from Milan to Paris. Arriving in Paris on Saturday morning, I faced a crisis. You see, in Paris there are a bunch of train stations, and the one at which I arrived was not the one where I could catch the train I needed to get to Cherbourg, where there was a boat back to Ireland. And I had no money, as has been said. Luckily, in the course of our travels, when we had left one country for another, we tended to exchange our paper money but just throw the coins into our bags for souvenirs. So there I was on an otherwise lovely Saturday morning, unpacking my backpack full of foul socks and eccentric religious paraphernalia in a French train station, looking for a few old francs that I could use for enough subway fare to get me to Gare du Nord. The coins turned up, and I was on my way.

By Saturday night, I was in Cherbourg getting on the boat. (My train pass was good for the boat, too) On the overnight trip I met a bunch of Germans who were reciting lines from This is Spinal Tap. We made friends right away, of course. I was ashamed to ask them for something to eat, however. On Sunday morning we arrived in Rosslare, where I boarded a bus headed across the country. It stopped at every little place you ever heard of, and many you haven't.

Finally, at about 9 pm on Sunday night I arrived at Eyre Square in Galway, having been traveling without a break for two and a half days and without anything to eat. The problem: it was Sunday and I had not been to Mass. I knew that I had plenty of time to make the regular 10 pm Mass at the University, but instead I went to the ATM and got a pizza on the way home. My Irish roommates started screaming when I walked in; since I had missed a week of school, they had presumed my death, they said.

So, having chosen the pizza over my Sunday obligation, I went to Galway Cathedral first thing Monday morning for confession. I confessed to the priest that I had missed Mass the day before. "Why?," he asked. So I started to explain, "Well, on Friday I was in Assisi..." Now the Irish are a storytelling culture, and the priest was clearly enjoying the tale I had to tell. By the time I came to the end, he was laughing out loud. He told me that I had probably made the right decision, but nevertheless gave me absolution for the other sins, irregularities, and missings of the mark I had committed in the course of my travels.

The Paschal Quiet

Easter Sunday afternoon, one of those moments as a parish priest when there is a sudden shift from activity and sound to quiet and stillness. From the Vigil last night and through the four Masses today, I've greeted hundreds of people, sang many hymns, preached twice, sprinkled two congregations, and done seven incensations of altars and Gospels, not to mention offering the Sacrifice three times.

And after all of this intensely social and sometimes feverish activity, these last few hours of the Paschal Triduum* arrive with complete quiet and solitude. Masses are done and the people have gone. It doesn't even seem like there is anyone in the friary; the brothers are perhaps asleep or have gone to visit someone.

I can see how some priests get trapped in loneliness. The ministry is very social; you make both friends and enemies in abundance, and attract flatterers and disciples. But at the ends of the day you are alone. So if you start to identify yourself with the support you receive from the people you serve, you put yourself in a dangerous place. You will be lonely when there is no one around to fulfill your need to be helpful, your need to be needed. As one of my friends in the Order described this caricature of ministry, "There I was, hard at work, doing for God what he couldn't do for himself."

But loneliness is a temptation, a running away from the invitation of solitude. The longer I go in my Christian journey--and here I am in the last hours of my seventeenth Paschal Triduum--I realize more and more that part of the charism of celibacy is an invitation to a certain kind of prayer that is jealous, exclusive, and very secret.

Amen. Surrexit Christus Vere. Alleluia.

*Sometimes people forget that the Triduum doesn't end with the Easter Vigil but extends through Vespers of Sunday. As far as divine revelation is concerned, a day goes from sundown to sundown; i.e., "Evening came and morning followed, the nth day." So the 'three days' of the Paschal Triduum commence with the Mass of the Lord's Supper, which replaces Vespers on Holy Thursday Evening, and close with Vespers on Sunday.

I Have Given You a Model to Follow

The Paschal Triduum approaches, and this year I have been asked to preach at the Mass of the Lord's Supper for the first time. My homily is posted here.

The Paschal Nightmares

I wake up with a start. It's 12:21 am and I realize that the time has come for that especially terrifying nocturnal visitation, the Paschal Triduum liturgy nightmare. No wonder I can't remember the Mass of the Lord's Supper the night before...Holy Thursday isn't until next week.

A few moments before, I'm dreaming and it's Good Friday afternoon. Charles, what do you mean you're not familiar with this specially adapted version of St. John's Passion? Haven't you been practicing? We're all ready to go. I can't find the prayers in the Sacramentary. And why can't I remember Holy Thursday Mass last night? You were there, Father. It was beautiful, as always, Father. It must be nerves. Am I going crazy? And why am I wearing this aquamarine chasuble? I need to go find something else. I just need to untie this other thing, whatever it is...oh no, stuck in another conversation on the way back. I still can't find the page. I make it back and I hear the intoning of the Gospel acclamation--they started without me. The pastor is going to be so mad at me. The kid working the fog machine shakes his head and I understand that I'm not to go out there now. It's too late. Panic. What is wrong with me that I can't remember Holy Thursday Mass last night?

And I wake up.

SC, OC, OI

Today I was introduced to one of little--and to this day hidden--rituals of the priesthood: the changing of one's holy oils on Holy Thursday. Here's how it goes:

Someone retrieves the new oils from the central supply at the seminary, since none of us could go to the Chrism Mass (as usual, we had wakes to go to.)

Then, all the priests in the house show up in the sacristy and take the little holy oil soaked cotton balls out of their little oil stocks and put them in an empty peanut butter jar. These will be used to start the new fire at the beginning of the Easter Vigil.

Then each one takes new cotton balls from the bag provided, puts them into the little oil stocks, and soaks them up with newly blessed oils. Then the oil stocks go back into your briefcase, glove compartment or book bag, and you're all set to anoint the sick or baptize and confirm in danger of death.

Humanity

The way we did the Good Friday service in my parish was quite striking. Each language group proclaimed John's Passion and prayed the intercessions in a different place. The English, Spanish, and Vietnamese speaking communities each had their own cleric, so I went with the Africans. Arabic isn't their native language, but they use it as an inter-tribal lingua franca.

It was really something to follow along in the Arabic Passion. Soon I was able to pick out some proper names: Peter, "Butrus," Pilate, "Pilatus." Other words I recognized from other well-known Arabic phrases, e.g. "Akbar" for the "high" in "high priest." Still other names and words were close to the pieces of Hebrew vocabulary I had learned in Scripture classes: Jesus, Jews, king.

As I stood there with the Africans, I was thinking about how different I was from them in every way, in language, history, experience, even in shape and color and appearance. And yet, in Christ we were one body because of our baptism into his death, and because of our communion in the Body and Blood of the Lord, risen into the bread and wine of the Eucharist.

For the Veneration of the Cross and Holy Communion, all the groups came together in the main church, and all I could think of was Isaiah's joyful vision of the various nations streaming to the Temple of the Lord.

Holy Saturday

God, the living God who called Abraham, created a people in the Exodus, and who spoke through the Prophets, this God is a good Jew.

So also God the Son incarnate in Jesus Christ is a good Jew. Thus, Jesus rests on this most holy Sabbath day. The great work of the Resurrection, of re-creating and renovating creation, will have to wait until the first day begins, after the Sun goes down tonight.

Good Friday

In his new apostolic exhortation, Sacramentum caritatis, Benedict XVI reminds us of the heart of Good Friday prayer: "A contemplative gaze 'upon him whom they have pierced.'" (John 19:37)

Today we mourn the Christ whom we have handed over to be tortured and executed with such brutality. One of my teachers once said, "People like to argue about who killed Christ. The only real answer is you and me."

If we are realistic enough to admit the anger, pride, and selfishness in ourselves, we begin to learn in our heart that we are a little contributor to our world's immense systems of violence, fear, danger, and oppression. If we are humble enough to admit our sin, our self-centeredness, and our rotten joy at pretending to be the center of the universe, then we can begin to see Jesus Christ whom we have pierced in every victim of war and economic injustice, in every abandoned old person and in every starving child.