Today, as I write, it is Holy Thursday. This evening the holy Three Days of Easter
open with a focus on Jesus’ last supper with his disciples, on the eve of his crucifixion. The Three Days (Triduum) moves from darkness
into glorious light at the Easter Vigil, where we proclaim Christ our Light.
But the darkness between, filled as it is with Jesus’
intense suffering amid his disciples’ desertion, the trials before Herod and
Pilate, the way of the cross that follows, and finally that terrible time when the
darkness seems to win out at last. As
Jesus hangs on the Cross, “From noon onward, darkness came over the whole land
until three in the afternoon. And about three o’clock Jesus cried out in a loud
voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:47).
That apparent triumph of darkness over even the Light of the
World, Jesus Christ himself, seems appallingly relevant as we read the news of
the escalating war in Ukraine, with its horrifying violence. As people and families are subjected to
wrenching separations, hideous torture and agonizing death, we are shaken by
the darkness that covers the land, with no immediate relief in sight. And the victims with and for whom we agonize are
only a part of the picture of humanity wiped out. The perpetrators are the other part. “My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?”
is prayer we might say with and for victims and perpetrators alike.
Those who inspire our prayer and energize it might seem far
away and long ago. Millennia have passed
since the events of that first Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday in
Jerusalem. And thousands of miles stand
between us and the war in Ukraine. But a
line from the Catholic Church’s Good Friday liturgy seems to me to call us to
our very real responsibility in the midst of this tragedy: “We adore you, O Christ,
and we bless you, because by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world.” Please bear with me as I try to spell out at
least bits of the mystery that is really beyond words.
The Triduum condenses into intense, powerful confrontation
with the truth that the Cross, instrument of horrible torture and death, is in
fact a not an end to the human story—either Jesus’ or ours or our brothers’ and
sisters’ in Ukraine and all other places of violence and war. The Cross is a
doorway that opens out into unending life at its full. At the Easter Vigil, as the lighted Candle,
with the sign of the cross drawn upon it enters the darkened Church, the Catholic
liturgy invites us we to hail Christ, the light of the world. Those of you from
other churches may experience this differently, but it is nevertheless the backbone
of Easter prayer for all believers. It is God’s promise that through Jesus’
death and resurrection, the closed container of mortality to which we seem to
be confined is broken open into a life we cannot yet even imagine.
It seems to me that we who acclaim that truth in the safety
of our churches and our homes bear a responsibility to carry it into all those
places, like Ukraine, Afghanistan, and Ethiopia, where death seems to conquer
all (and in so doing, though we rarely say it out loud, make all our life’s
efforts pointless in the end). The death
of faith is death indeed. The task seems
Quixotic—Quixote being that deluded old knight who tilted at windmills,
mistaking them for jousting opponents.
And it would be, if it were not for our belief that we, all of us,
everywhere, are together members of Christ.
St. Paul assures us that whatever happens to one member of the Body
affects the whole body (see 1 Corinthians 12:24-26). So, if we, even amid our securities, hold
fiercely to the claim that the Light of Christ triumphs over every darkness in
the end, we are surely feeding that truth into the whole Body, even those
trapped in unendurable nigh and, in so doing, offering them the strength to abide. And, if only at moments, abide without
returning hatred for hatred, drawing however briefly and slightly from Jesus on
the cross praying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke
23:34).
Before those of you who have known combat from any
perspective--military, medical, chaplaincy— or have done policing tell me this will
do nothing for those who live in the neighborhoods become battlefield (and I
honor your experience and your courage in embracing it), I own again that it
seems Quixotic. And all of us who have
suffered the dark streets of suffering and loss that are not confined to
battlefields, can readily agree. But
faith deals in realities we believe exist but cannot see, taste, touch or feel. And the reality of the Cross as ever-open
doorway from awful night into glorious day is the most important of them all.
So as we sit, stand and kneel in our churches during the
holy days ahead of us, or as we sit before the daily news reports, let us at
least dare Quixote’s venture and pray with all our strength: “We adore you, O
Christ, and we praise you, because by your holy cross, you have redeemed the
world!” And let us pass it on through
the invisible strands that bind us inexorably to all those everywhere held
tightly in the unconquerable love of God made flesh in Jesus Christ.
©2022 Abbey
of St. Walburga
