I have come to think of the catholic Eucharist as a kind of Greek drama. Central to it is a symbolic reenactment of the Last Supper which is related to the death and resurrection of Jesus. The story is symbolically told by the priest who officiates at the service and represents the person of Jesus while the congregation are a bit like the Chorus, entering into the experience through responses, the singing of hymns and the reception of the consecrated bread and wine. It wasn’t always like this. Before the 1960s and the Second Vatican Council the liturgy was conducted by the priest with his back to the people in Latin and the congregation left to make sense of it by following what the priest was doing in their missals or saying their own private prayers. They were much more observers than participants. Now it has changed.
The liturgy of the Easter season is particularly dramatic and intense. It begins on Holy Thursday when the service recounts the story of the Last Supper which the priest enacts by washing the feet of 12 parishioners. At the end of the Mass there is a procession when the priest with the congregation processes to a spot outside the main body of the Church with the bread, consecrated and symbolically understood as the presence of Jesus and known as the Blessed Sacrament. This is placed on a specially constructed altar, representing the garden in which Jesus prayed before his death. Night prayer and morning prayer the next day will be conducted at this altar, allowing those attending to symbolically enter into the experience of waiting with Jesus in the agony he underwent before his arrest. The Good Friday service focusses on the Cross and there is a reading of the account of the passion and death of Jesus from the Gospel of John and after a large Cross is processed into the Church and displayed before the altar everyone in the congregation is invited to come forward and venerate it either by touching it or kissing it. There are also prayers for different categories of people. At the end of the service all depart in silence and in a spirit of mourning. The Easter Vigil on the Saturday evening (the liturgical day begins on the eve of a festival as it does in Judaism) has a different feel. There is the blessing of new fire and the baptismal water, the lighting of the Paschal candle and its light distributed to the candles held by the congregation, readings beginning with the account of Creation, proceeding to the story of the Exodus and the promises of the Prophets when the People of Israel strayed from the Covenant, the proclamation of the Resurrection of Jesus and a wonderfully glorious singing of the Exsultet, an ancient hymn of praise sung by one voice while all hold their lighted candles in a darkened Church. It is at this service that people who after a year’s preparation are received into the Church. The parish that I attended had 12 young people doing this. 8 of them were baptised and all 12 were confirmed. This is amazingly moving though I can’t help but wonder what has attracted them to the Church. The numbers joining the Church seem to be growing and this year 549 people in Scotland became Catholics.
The drama in these services is intense and if, like my experience, they are conducted by a priest with a flair for the dramatic, the homily is meaningful, the music and the singing is uplifting, the Church is packed and participation is high then the three days offer an experience of the core story of Christianity that binds the community together. It is rather wonderful. For me to see it all as a drama allows me to disregard and sit lightly on some of the words of the prayers, hymns and even readings that raise questions for me. It means that I do not have to let their literalness spoil the experience which I find is more difficult at more ordinary masses throughout the year.
The three days of the easter liturgy focusses of course on the death and resurrection of Jesus. The new fire and the candle lit from it is a sure sign of a light that dispels the darkness. It is a celebration of Jesus who is not dead but alive in his community. Like Judaism this celebration does not just remember past events but keeps them alive in the present so that it is this night that “sanctifying power … dispels wickedness, washes faults away, restores innocence to the fallen… drives out hatred, fosters concord and brings down the mighty” to quote the beginning of the Exultet. In his easter sermon Pope Leo said that the paschal candle which now takes a central place in Catholic Churches represents the light of Christ, which “unites us in the Church as lights for the world.” Easter, he said, is ultimately the victory “of life over death, of light over darkness, of love over hatred.” And yet death, darkness, hatred still persist, the mighty continue to wage war, the world is in turmoil. So, what does it mean to say that Jesus is risen, and all has been transformed when it obviously hasn’t.
This celebration of the resurrection is not just about the past or the present but (and maybe more importantly) about the future. It is a call to continue the presence of Jesus in the world by keeping alive his message of love, by working for justice and peace, desiring the well-being of all. The easter liturgy shows us what we can be, what we can become, what potential there is in us to be lights to the world. In so far as people are lights to the society in which they live they witness to the resurrection of Jesus. They can show that Jesus has not died in vain, that his memory is a force for good and that there is hope for a future that can only be realised by us through love.
In this sense Jesus has risen indeed.
The liturgy of the Easter season is particularly dramatic and intense. It begins on Holy Thursday when the service recounts the story of the Last Supper which the priest enacts by washing the feet of 12 parishioners. At the end of the Mass there is a procession when the priest with the congregation processes to a spot outside the main body of the Church with the bread, consecrated and symbolically understood as the presence of Jesus and known as the Blessed Sacrament. This is placed on a specially constructed altar, representing the garden in which Jesus prayed before his death. Night prayer and morning prayer the next day will be conducted at this altar, allowing those attending to symbolically enter into the experience of waiting with Jesus in the agony he underwent before his arrest. The Good Friday service focusses on the Cross and there is a reading of the account of the passion and death of Jesus from the Gospel of John and after a large Cross is processed into the Church and displayed before the altar everyone in the congregation is invited to come forward and venerate it either by touching it or kissing it. There are also prayers for different categories of people. At the end of the service all depart in silence and in a spirit of mourning. The Easter Vigil on the Saturday evening (the liturgical day begins on the eve of a festival as it does in Judaism) has a different feel. There is the blessing of new fire and the baptismal water, the lighting of the Paschal candle and its light distributed to the candles held by the congregation, readings beginning with the account of Creation, proceeding to the story of the Exodus and the promises of the Prophets when the People of Israel strayed from the Covenant, the proclamation of the Resurrection of Jesus and a wonderfully glorious singing of the Exsultet, an ancient hymn of praise sung by one voice while all hold their lighted candles in a darkened Church. It is at this service that people who after a year’s preparation are received into the Church. The parish that I attended had 12 young people doing this. 8 of them were baptised and all 12 were confirmed. This is amazingly moving though I can’t help but wonder what has attracted them to the Church. The numbers joining the Church seem to be growing and this year 549 people in Scotland became Catholics.
The drama in these services is intense and if, like my experience, they are conducted by a priest with a flair for the dramatic, the homily is meaningful, the music and the singing is uplifting, the Church is packed and participation is high then the three days offer an experience of the core story of Christianity that binds the community together. It is rather wonderful. For me to see it all as a drama allows me to disregard and sit lightly on some of the words of the prayers, hymns and even readings that raise questions for me. It means that I do not have to let their literalness spoil the experience which I find is more difficult at more ordinary masses throughout the year.
The three days of the easter liturgy focusses of course on the death and resurrection of Jesus. The new fire and the candle lit from it is a sure sign of a light that dispels the darkness. It is a celebration of Jesus who is not dead but alive in his community. Like Judaism this celebration does not just remember past events but keeps them alive in the present so that it is this night that “sanctifying power … dispels wickedness, washes faults away, restores innocence to the fallen… drives out hatred, fosters concord and brings down the mighty” to quote the beginning of the Exultet. In his easter sermon Pope Leo said that the paschal candle which now takes a central place in Catholic Churches represents the light of Christ, which “unites us in the Church as lights for the world.” Easter, he said, is ultimately the victory “of life over death, of light over darkness, of love over hatred.” And yet death, darkness, hatred still persist, the mighty continue to wage war, the world is in turmoil. So, what does it mean to say that Jesus is risen, and all has been transformed when it obviously hasn’t.
This celebration of the resurrection is not just about the past or the present but (and maybe more importantly) about the future. It is a call to continue the presence of Jesus in the world by keeping alive his message of love, by working for justice and peace, desiring the well-being of all. The easter liturgy shows us what we can be, what we can become, what potential there is in us to be lights to the world. In so far as people are lights to the society in which they live they witness to the resurrection of Jesus. They can show that Jesus has not died in vain, that his memory is a force for good and that there is hope for a future that can only be realised by us through love.
In this sense Jesus has risen indeed.
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