Category: liturgy

Preparing the Altar

Preparing the Altar

Since my homeward journey from work has construction, I have been obligated to seek different routes over the past few weeks. Either as a result of the construction or simply how it always is, I find myself waiting in more traffic in parts of town with which I am not as familiar. One road with a bit of traffic has a few places where people often turn and so I try very hard to watch the lights and the movement of traffic in order to not be that person who annoyingly blocks intersections. I get a bit embarrassed when we wind up in completely stopped traffic and a person who could turn cannot because I’m blocking the route.

The other day it worked perfectly. The car next to me knew what they were doing and so when the light turned red, we held back and left plenty of space for vehicles in the opposing lane to turn through and carry on their way. It was nice to be next to a car that was completely stopped, not inching forward or worried that they might be a second delayed or inconvenienced. The light turned green and no cars had yet moved forward, but the car behind me honked and, when I glanced in my side mirror, gestured impatiently for me to go.

I felt a flash of anger. The injustice of being honked at–couldn’t they see that I was letting people through? I perhaps moved my arm upwards with a fling of annoyance. Then I accelerated and was no further behind the next car than if I had been inches from their bumper the entire time.

Once the anger passed, I kept wondering why the person was so impatient. The traffic was all still there. I wasn’t mindlessly on my phone. The second the light turns green doesn’t mean that the 5th or 6th car in line should expect to be moving. Why are we so impatient?

We don’t like to wait. We don’t want to feel like we are getting left behind. We don’t want to feel like our time is wasted or that progress could be made but isn’t. We don’t want to be pointlessly sitting at a light waiting for the people around us to get their act together. And I don’t think any of that is really that deep or profound or unknown.

Today, however, I was at Mass as we commemorated the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross and I experienced a moment of waiting that I hadn’t recognized before. After the homily, I was considering the various crosses in my life and attempting to surrender them to Jesus. Or to at least acknowledge them and continue to hope that Christ’s victory would someday be found in those very places. As I was praying, I noticed what was happening as the priest received the vessels from the server, unfolded the corporal, and poured drops of wine and water into the chalice.

We were waiting.

Continue reading “Preparing the Altar” →

I Slept on the Cross

I Slept on the Cross

I often forget that Holy Saturday would have included the Sabbath rest for the early followers of Jesus. After the sorrow of Good Friday, they were ushered into a day that must have been brimming with painful reflection over the tumult of the past day. Did they go to the synagogue or temple? Did they gather together to pray? While the rest of the Jewish people were thanking God for the works He has performed, were they questioning why He didn’t act in this particular situation?

Holy Saturday is a day of waiting. Much of my life seems to be lived in a Holy Saturday state of being. I know the Lord can act and I’ve seen Him acting, yet in some situations it seems there is not much progress being made. So I wait. I wait trusting that the Lord knows what He is about and is preparing something wonderful beyond words for my weary little heart. I trust that the waiting is worth something. I trust that this period of waiting is accomplishing far more than many periods of acting could accomplish.

While we know the “end” of the story, we can sympathize with the first followers of Jesus by recognizing that the next step in our story is unknown. Entering into this liturgical Holy Saturday, we can see that God’s will and actions so often remain a mystery to us. In the fullness of time, it will be revealed and we shall see how God was continually providing for us and pouring out abundant graces upon us. For now, we must trust that the Lord is moving, even in the stillness or the quiet or the apparent absence of His action.

Continue reading “I Slept on the Cross” →

Ever Ancient, Ever New: The Gift of the Liturgical Year

Ever Ancient, Ever New: The Gift of the Liturgical Year

On a plane ride a few weeks ago, I found myself seated next to the founder of a Protestant church. He laughed because he was sandwiched between two Catholics, a married man who had been in Catholic seminary for a little while on his right and me, a Catholic high school Theology teacher, on his left. The conversation was pleasant, but the pastor shared one thing that seemed rather significant to me. Although he founded and now pastors an extremely contemporary church, he said his personal prayer is quite liturgical. This point fascinated me because it spoke of the true desire for liturgy is woven into the fabric of our beings.

As humans, we are bound to worship, whether our focal point is God or something else varies for the individual.  Perhaps overly simplified, the liturgy is our communal worship, the traditional rites we follow to offer praise, thanksgiving, and supplication to God.  Of the various liturgies in the Catholic Church, the highest is the Eucharist, the Sacrament of sacraments.  Beyond the structure of this liturgy is the structure of the year.  Too often I take for granted the beautiful gift that is found in the yearly passing through the major points of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Several years ago, I heard it said that in the Church’s wisdom she developed the liturgical year to satisfy mankind’s love of change and stability.  Having never before thought of it like that, I experienced a new perspective of something that had always been present in my life.  In delving into the rich rhythm of the liturgical year, I have discovered that the feasting and fasting, as well as the ordinary and extraordinary times, provide a healthy balance in life.  Since humanity often tires of the same thing, the Church moves us through different seasons to celebrate and recall the different parts of the mystery of Christ.  Yet constant change is difficult and so the seasons are cyclical, each new year of grace seeking to lead us deeper into these same mysteries of Christ but in a fresh way.

While the Gregorian calendar tells us a month is left of this year, the liturgical calendar is reminding us that a new year is close at hand.  Personally, I like that the two calendars that govern my life are slightly off-center.  It reminds me that I am in the world but not of it.  As a follower of Christ, it calls me to acknowledge that His grace should cause me to see the year in a different way since my sight is imbued with an otherworldly perspective.

With the Church in the first days of a new year, let us consider the gift of the changing liturgical seasons.

Advent: Waiting for Christ’s Coming

The year starts off in joyful anticipation. Joining our hearts and minds with the Israelites, we wait for the coming of the Messiah. Yet knowing that Jesus has already come and ascended, we wait for His Second Coming at the end of time. This pregnant season of waiting calls to mind St. Paul’s words in Romans 8:22-25.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning with labor pains together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

We do not wait without a purpose. As parents of a newborn prepare for the child’s birth, so we make our hearts ready for Christ’s new birth into our hearts and our birth into eternal life. While Advent is culturally forgotten or seen merely as a time of wrapping presents and sending Christmas cards, it should cause us to remember that we need to make Him room, in our hearts and in our lives.

The best Advent I have ever had was the semester I took an Old Testament Scripture class in college. For months we made our way through salvation history, learning about the covenants that God repeatedly offered man and the ways humanity broke those covenants. We ended the semester with a unit on the prophets and, for the very first time, I encountered a taste of the longing that the Israelites must have experienced. Scripture passages that I had heard before were filled with a new life, a new pleading that God would send a Redeemer. While I knew the Savior had already come, I experienced the “wait” in a new way and thus experienced the joy of Christmas in a new way. Continue reading “Ever Ancient, Ever New: The Gift of the Liturgical Year” →

The Triduum

The Triduum is an experience for all of the senses.  While I’ve never been anything but Catholic, I cannot imagine another church matching the beauty of the Triduum and the way the liturgies invite us into the Pascal Mystery.

Holy Thursday begins with joy and beckoning us to the table of Our Lord’s Last Supper.  I can imagine Christ bending low to wash my feet as the priest in persona Christi stoops to wash the feet of the young men called forward.  After the Eucharistic prayer, I approach the priest to receive from him my Lord, the Word made flesh and remaining in the appearance of bread and wine.  Tonight, I am an apostle from another century, experiencing the Last Supper and encountering Christ in a tangible way.  My senses are alive as the Eucharistic procession weaves its way around the church.  An incense thurible fills my nose with the sweet, rich odor I link only to the Eucharist.  The priest is embracing Jesus as we sing Pange Lingua Gloriosi.  Our Lord is carried to an altar and the faithful are invited to come and wait with Him.

I fulfill my role of a disciple well.  In the intimately dim chapel, I wait with Jesus and I drift off to sleep at times.  Can I not wait one hour?  Apparently not.  It is beautiful to see the others in adoration, praying with Jesus before He is hidden from us, when the stark reality of the Pascal Mystery will become more obvious.  Then the time of waiting in the Garden is over and we depart in silence.  Talking seems inappropriate.  Nearly anything seems inappropriate on such an evening.

Good Friday is spent anticipating and remembering the Passion of Jesus.  The simplicity of the Good Friday service is unnerving and striking.  I can always feel an ache in my heart.  The tabernacle is left open and I am continually reminded that He is gone.  Approaching the cross so as to venerate it, I am questioning where to kiss Jesus.  My stomach feels the hunger of fasting and I kiss the crucifix with the kiss of Judas, with the kiss of John the beloved.  Good Friday fills me with a longing and with a sorrow.  The rest of the world seems to be continuing at its typical pace but I cannot carry on as normal.

The waiting of Holy Saturday is difficult.  Christ has been crucified and laid in the tomb.  He has yet to rise, though.  Fasting is not obligatory yet the feasting of Easter is still premature.  We wait.  Waiting is perhaps the focal point of Holy Saturday and it makes it all the more difficult.

Yet the Easter Vigil will arrive with its dark and quiet entrance.  A fire lit and from it, a flame passed to light all the candles in the darkened church.  There is a stillness of expectation.  We know the story, we know Christ will rise, and yet we are waiting for it to be lived out, to be fulfilled in this sacrifice.  Darkness turns into light.  As a church we are led through salvation history, to hear how God remains ever-faithful and is responding to the longings and yearnings of His people in an unforeseen way.  We are reminded that we are a part of something far larger than ourselves or our parish.  We are united to a Church that is truly universal and timeless.  Joy mounts in my soul as we continue through the Mass. As the beautiful music announces a living reality in my life: Christ has risen.  He rose 2,000 years ago and He rises today in my heart.  The highest feast of the Church is celebrated with all the pomp owed to a King who mounts a cross as a throne and gives Himself as the food for the wedding banquet.

Easter Sunday is bright and joyful, a renewal of the joy felt the night before.  While Easter Vigil tends to hold a heavy joy for me, Easter Sunday is a light, uplifting joy.  The sun must shine on such a day and if it does not, the joy of the feast becomes a light of its own right.  The lilies decorate the Church and we sing words that we have refrained from saying for weeks.  It adds a depth to the joy that would not be found if one simply arrived at Easter without the Lent.  The Easter Sunday celebration continues for the Easter Octave, each day the Church repeating the joy of the resurrection.  Liturgically, we celebrate the Easter Mass repeatedly.  We cannot move on, we must make it known that this is the highest of all celebrations.

The Triduum and Easter season are for all of the senses.  Breathing in the incense from the Eucharistic procession, waiting with Jesus in the Garden, saying the words of the angry crowd as Jesus is condemned to death, kissing the cross of Our Lord, waiting as Jesus is held in the tomb, lighting our candle from the Easter candle representing the light of Christ Himself, and singing with exultation the joy central to the Catholic faith: we worship a God made man who rose from the dead.  The Triduum calls us to live out the final days of Christ and to enter into the mystery by which we are saved.  In a beautiful combination of music, art, sights, and sounds, the Church transports us to the time of Jesus Christ.  Or, perhaps, she causes us to acknowledge that the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus are truly timeless events that we experience now through the beauty of the Body of Christ, the Church in her tri-fold magnificence.