Easter Triduum 2024
/Holy Thursday (John 13:1-15)
Commentary:
From: “First Impressions”, a service of the Southern Dominican Province:
Foot washings were a part of hospitality in this culture. The roads were dusty and guests coming for a visit or meal would welcome the chance to have the dust from the road washed from their feet. Normally the washing would have been done before the meal and was the task of the youngest or lowliest servant or slave. The importance of the event is underscored by Jesus’ breaking the pattern of what was customary and acceptable: he interrupts the meal and does the washings himself. His final hour is at hand and he is already emptying himself. His dying has begun; our new life is about to begin. In fact, a sign of the community’s new life brought about by Jesus’ action will be that they will be “foot-washers”, servants to the needy among them. But much more is implied by his actions.
John is writing for a community like our own who, since their baptism, have many things from which they need cleansing. This account is encouraging for the community members who have failed, as Peter did, to live up to their Christian calling. After he betrayed Jesus, Peter must have been heartened by his remembrance of this incident and the possibility Jesus holds out to be washed from the soil of the road. Since the incident also took place at the table, the suggestion is that forgiveness is offered us through the meal we share in remembrance of Jesus. In our Eucharist, the first thing we do is ask for forgiveness of our failings. It’s as if each eucharistic meal begins with a foot washing. And we are the grateful recipients as we are reminded that what Jesus did for Peter, he does for us.
Thus, there is another way we can imitate the example of the One we call “teacher and master.” We can follow the example he set for us. Besides the call to service, so evident in the foot washing, another response Jesus may be asking of us tonight is to forgive one another as he has forgiven us. Since the ritual will be performed in many places of worship this day, we may want to look around at who else is present at the table with us and wash their feet by forgiving them what we hold against them.
A Meditation in the Dominican Style/Asking Questions:
In today’s gospel John says that Jesus, “was fully aware that the Father had put everything into his power....” Then we are told that Jesus rose from supper”, and I wonder, is this going to be one of those, “Oh, oh, here it comes” moments? Will Jesus use the power he has been given to overcome his enemies? Will he name and condemn his betrayer? Will he smite the Roman army? Dash over to the Temple and cast out his religious opponents and banish the unfaithful? Will he break his previous pattern of patiently instructing his disciples, dismiss them and go get a better and brighter crop of followers? What will Jesus do when he rises from table with all that power available to him?
Well, he certainly surprised his disciples. And he continues to surprise us this day. Jesus rises and washes his disciples’ feet. That’s not how they, or we, would use all the power, were it available to us. How do we know? Because it isn’t the way power is usually used in our world: nations dominate nations; one ethnic group purges its rival; one religion proclaims its dominance over others; some parents, by word and example, teach their children to succeed at any cost; some church officials cut off dialogue over disputed issues; news commentators shout down one another on talk shows; businesses take over weaker rivals, etc. It does seem that when some nations, organizations, religions and individuals come to power, other groups must shudder and say, “Oh, oh, here it comes!” – and suffer the consequences. Having power is not necessarily a bad thing and Jesus’ life and today’s gospel are examples of ways to use power to the benefit and for the good of others. His use of power is also an example to us.
Do I see myself in a position of power, even if it is just being the dominant one in a relationship? Where have I ever misused the power that I had by taking advantage of the neediness of another? Have I ever admitted that “my feet were dirty” and needed washing by the mercy of God? Have I shown that mercy to another? How do humility and pride fit together? I speak to Jesus about the ways I have taken advantage of the power I had, including the power one has as a “victim”. I ask for him to wash me clean of these tendencies and fit my heart for serving others.
Good Friday (John 18:1–19:42)
Commentary:
Exaltation of the Cross
Sept. 14, 2008
by Catherine Wolff
My early school days were spent at St. Agnes Grammar School up in San Francisco. I’m old enough that seeing a movie was a major treat in those days, and the nuns who ran St. Agnes must have invested all their savings in the one movie we had in our library – a Spanish film that came out in the mid-1950’s called The Miracle of Marcellino.
My memory of the exact plot is a bit sketchy –Marcellino was a poor little orphan who had been taken in by the monks in a very austere monastery, and there was an episode having to do with a scorpion bite, and a miracle involving bread and wine. But I do have vivid, enduring memories of the conversations that Marcellino would have with Jesus. He was a lonely little boy who visited the chapel regularly to pray out loud in front of a crucifix that seemed to be at least 15 feet tall. After a while Jesus, from way up on the cross, started talking back in a deep, rich, sorrowful voice. It was a great comfort to Marcellino but it was absolutely terrifying to me as a 6 or 7-year-old. I was worried that any number of crucifixes that hung all over Catholic 1950’s San Francisco would start speaking to me, but really what was most disturbing was that Jesus was somehow still hanging on the cross, now, today.
Now this was in the days just before Vatican II, when there was still considerable emphasis on the cross as ransom for sin, and on our personal and collective culpability in Jesus’ suffering and death. The story of the cross was told in terms of the sacrifice necessary for the redemption of our sins, one that we find in the Synoptic Gospels. This was a story that implied that God was deeply offended, that he required appeasement, recompense, and that since no mere human could make up for the estrangement that we humans had chosen, God had to send His own son to make amends, and to require of Him the ultimate sacrifice of death.
But there is another way to understand the cross. If we consider God’s love to be the real basis for hope, instead of the terrible ransom of Jesus’ life, we can tell another version of the story. It starts with creation itself, where God begins to reveal Himself, freely and forgivingly, as we see in today’s first reading about his care for his hungry and confused people wandering in the desert. And in this story creation is not an event that is contained in the past but is actually ongoing in history, ongoing in our hearts.
The next phase in this unfolding revelation of God’s love is the Incarnation. This is not a desperate salvage job, where God has to intervene in human history to help set it right. We already see him intervening continuously throughout the Old Testament, through the covenant which He kept so lovingly and faithfully and His People kept so badly. The Incarnation is God breaking directly, physically, into history in human form in the person of Jesus. In fact, the great Franciscan Duns Scotus made a powerful argument that the Incarnation is God’s primary redemptive act. He said that the Incarnation was first and foremost in God’s mind from the beginning. It could not have been dependent on, or occasioned by, any action of humans, especially sin.
The language of John’s Gospel, which we hear today, does not stress Jesus’ death as ransom, sacrifice, atonement, as the Synoptic Gospels do. In John and Ephesians, in Duns Scotus and Karl Rahner, the crucifixion is part of Jesus’ glorification, not only a sacrifice but a manifestation of the lengths to which God is willing to go to bring us closer to him.
All of Jesus’ work was redemptive, all of it ennobled our human nature he took on for us – his healing, his teaching, and as we heard from Paul today, his obedience unto death, even death on a cross. Jesus was a prophet in a long tradition that believed in the power of suffering to atone for wrongdoing, and because he was so faithful to God’s will, he come to understand that he was to die, and that his death was a sacrifice for others.
Jesus resolutely accepted his fate, and his faithfulness persisted throughout his terrible suffering and into his death. But so did the Father’s outpouring of love. We know that because Jesus was raised from the dead, and we are given new life in the Kingdom that came about as a result.
And yet that Kingdom is often so difficult to realize. We still suffer. You do, I do. I think of my long walk with my brother down the road to his death from brain cancer. I think of my friend Mary who has carried her schizophrenic brother for twenty years now. I wonder where so many Katrina victims are – they never came home again. And when I see pictures of children in Darfur it seems as though much of humankind is still nailed to a cross.
How can we find hope in our suffering, in the suffering of Jesus on the cross? How can we come to comprehend the reality that the cross contains not only the suffering but also the incarnation and the exaltation of Jesus? That it contains not only failure and scandal and pain but also victory and the promise of eternal life? Jesus already triumphed, and yet you and I here today are not yet capable of living fully in the Kingdom he established.
We are more like the Hebrews wandering around in the desert, complaining about wretched food and ravaged by serpents. In the rather mysterious passage we heard earlier, Moses had to appeal to God who told him to make an image of the serpent, mount it on a pole, and to have everybody who had been bitten look at it, and as a result, actually live. God had his people confront that which terrified them, and in doing so they were healed.
In fact, Jesus recalls that very event in the gospel we heard today – He tells us that as Moses raised up the serpent for his people, the Son of Man is also lifted up so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. The Son of Man lifted up on the cross is a dreadful sight to see. It requires us to confront not only Jesus’ suffering but our own demons, and our own suffering borne in His body.
This is a powerful lesson of the cross – that we cannot turn away from suffering. We must assume our crosses as faithfully as Jesus did; we must suffer in order to be healed. In being healed we will be able to accept Jesus’ reassurance that the cross is the occasion for the great manifestation of God’s love for us, not a condemnation of the world but a promise that the world is saved.
A Meditation in the Franciscan Style/Action:
We want to be careful how we view about suffering and death during these days. I wonder how we can think of them as positive? In the Scriptures of the Jewish people, suffering and death are to be avoided and, where possible, alleviated. The hope we have as Christians is that God will do away with both at the end. It seems to be always the poor who suffer the most, who always are the victims. So, during these days we might wish to become more fully involved with God’s plan to alleviate suffering by alleviating the suffering of the poor by deeper involvement in social programs. Good Friday, for example, should not be a day that keeps a silence of inattention to the suffering of others. If we keep a silence this day it may be to ponder the suffering of those around us and to resolve to do something about it. For example, was a victim of the death penalty. The church has a very strong stand against the death penalty, and yet we seem unable to eradicate this evil. Sr. Helen Prejean, SCJ has worked tirelessly on behalf of those on Death row. What can you do to get involved in this issue? For starters, here is a prayer she has written that you might want to pray every day:
God of Compassion,
You let your rain fall on the just and the unjust.
Expand and deepen our hearts so that we may love as You love,
even those among us who have caused the greatest pain by taking a life.
For there is in our land a great cry for vengeance
as we fill up death rows and kill the killers in the name of justice,
in the name of peace.
Jesus, our brother,
You suffered execution at the hands of the state
but you did not let hatred overcome you.
Help us to reach out to victims of violence
so that our enduring love may help them heal.
Holy Spirit of God,
You strengthen us in the struggle for justice.
Help us to work tirelessly for the abolition of state-sanctioned death
and to renew our society in its very heart
so that violence will be no more. Amen.
Easter Vigil (Mark 16:1-8)
Commentary:
From “First Impressions”, a service of the Southern Dominican Province:
For those of us who have experienced the death of loved ones over this last year, this feast brings a message of comfort. Our bonds with our beloved dead are not perpetually broken, left in ashes. Our faith assures us that we, with them, will rise again. Those of us approaching the end of our lives, because of sickness or advanced age, also are encouraged today. What seems like a certain victory for death, is not. God has the last laugh over death and so our faith assuages our fears.
But this feast isn’t just about the next life. Resurrection also challenges us for this life; what difference will the resurrection make for us now? There is enough evidence in our world to urge us to stay in whatever tomb we dwell. The world is a scary place, especially these days and withdrawal from meaningful engagement with it is a temptation. We have lots of help if we want to skip out and disengage: alcohol, work, long hours in front of the tv, going through the motions until retirement, avoiding the large social problems around us, etc. We can take refuge in the day-to-day routine, it numbs us and facilitates our exemption from new life. For those injured by life, the fear of the unknown future also keeps us in the tomb. The heavy stone that covers a possible exit to new life helps us stay sheltered and protected from what seems threatening -- and yet holds the promise of renewal. The resurrection says God has other plans for us. God does not leave us on our own as we face the heavy task of emergence from the tomb. What the women saw as an insurmountable burden (“Who will roll back the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?”), God was already addressing. The stone was removed and new life had already left the place of death and is spreading that life just up ahead in Galilee.
The young man at the tomb, dressed as a heavenly messenger, refers to “Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified.” The emphasis here is on the human Jesus. The references to Jesus as a Nazarene and as the one crucified, are also derogatory terms. He is from a small town, not respected by the more urbane people of Jerusalem (“Can anything good come from Nazareth?” John 1: 46) and he was crucified – he suffered the death of a criminal. Yet this very one from Nazareth, crucified as a criminal, the messenger tells the women, has been raised. This is Isaiah’s Suffering Servant whom we heard about yesterday, Good Friday (Isaiah 52:13-53-12), the one who was misunderstood, rejected, condemned and executed. What a complete reversal has just happened!
But the resurrection comes only through Jesus’ death—he is “the crucified.” Mark won’t let us forget that the shadow of the cross is still present in this new age inaugurated by Jesus’ resurrection. Our world may not believe in the resurrection; the word may be very strange to moderns. But people certainly know about the cross and suffering. Even unbelievers will say, “I have a heavy cross to bear.” We keep the crosses of our world in mind as we celebrate the resurrection. The cross casts its long shadow over our earth and its peoples. The messenger reminds us that our God is no stranger to pain. God isn’t just the God of sunsets, pretty flowers and innocent children. A sober appraisal of our world will not allow us such a clean, sterile God. We look at the recent mass killings in two of our cities, the half million in our country who have died of the Covid virus—not counting 125 million worldwide who have had or died from the virus; the 25% of our children in this country below the poverty line; sex slavery and spousal abuse, etc. Jesus is called the “crucified one,” and we are reminded that our God entered our world, the world we know all too well, whose sorrow seems to dwarf the “lilies of the field” and the “birds of the air.” We gathered with the suffering messiah and the tormented of the world at the cross on Good Friday. We believed our God was there with us, despite the fact that we got no immediate answers and were defeated. Evil seemed so large and powerful, we felt impotent and dwarfed. We need Good Friday to remind us that we are not alone in our suffering; God is no stranger to our pain. In Jesus, God too has lost everything in death. After it was all over, we asked the same question the women did, “Who will roll away the stone?” Who will open the tomb; who will set us free and destroy death? On Good Friday and Holy Saturday we and the women weren’t thinking too optimistically; we weren’t thinking “Springtime thoughts.” Dead bodies don’t rise on their own. But the Genesis story tonight reminds us that God can create from nothing. God spoke over the formless wasteland and into the darkness of the abyss and created light. God can completely reverse a helpless situation. And God did; for while God stood with us at the cross on Good Friday, God has also acted boldly and unexpectedly on Easter morning. Once again, as in Genesis, God spoke a mighty word, this time into the tomb’s darkness. Again God created light for us. God rolled away the stone of death with a life-giving word. God now turns towards us as we ask the women’s question, “Who will roll back the stone for us?” God responds, “I will.”
This story should give us courage to face what has died in our lives and we can be reassured that God stands with us as we grieve our deaths. But God still has something new in store for us. Each of us knows Good Friday; but we are not stuck there. Though we have reached a dead end, some new life will be shown to us, some new possibility up ahead will open for us. We believe the messenger’s words, “He is going before you to Galilee.” The young man’s announcement to the women, “He has been raised; he is not here,” becomes our shout at this liturgy, “Christ is risen!” We love this feast, it bursts upon us with song, drama and color after a drab Lent. But after the glow, does its reality stay with us? So often we have seen good defeated by hostile forces and declared “Finished.” (“Nice try, but you lose.”) Today we celebrate God’s choice to be with our vulnerable humanity, engage death and come out victorious. Now we are asked to believe, with the women, the message at the empty tomb; to take seriously that God has exposed the lies death has given us. Today’s gospel ends with us holding our breath. Will the woman and we, struck with amazement go out following the trail of the risen Christ and trust he will be with us each time we face down death’s debilitating effects on our lives?
Mark has avoided the spectacular in his account. There is nothing extraordinary about the young man at the tomb, or in the fact that the stone was rolled away. In fact, this gospel originally ended with the very next verse, “When the women ran from the tomb, they were confused and shaking all over. They were too afraid to tell anyone what had happened” (12:8). The women go off and tell no one what they have seen. In the original ending there were no appearance stories of the resurrected Christ. By the messenger’s emphasizing Jesus’ humanity (“Jesus of Nazareth”) and his suffering (“the crucified”), Mark is downplaying the glorious and emphasizing Jesus’ sharing our human condition. Mark wants his persecuted Christian community to soberly reflect on the meaning of the resurrection in its own struggling life. He seems to encourage them to face their fears and doubts with hope. To their question, “When will finally we see him?” Mark provides the messenger’s promise, that Jesus is up ahead, in Galilee, the place they expected to meet him when he did return at the end of time in his glory. We will see the glory, Mark is suggesting. That is what now sustains us with hope amid our doubts and struggles.
A Meditation in the Ignatian Style/Imagination:
My name is Mary Magdalene. I have been a close friend and follower of Jesus bar Joseph for almost three years. His understanding and kindness was life-saving to me when my family thought I was insane, when I was, in reality, very depressed. He always welcoming to those who followed him to offer support in his journeys up and down Galilee. In a culture that relegates women to the invisible, especially when men are around, is was so refreshing to be treated as an equal partner in this venture. Jesus and his twelve closest male disciples had decided to celebrate the Seder supper together, as was appropriate. I am not sure what some of the others thought about those of us women who followed Jesus from place to place, or who welcomed them into their home, like Mary and Martha of course, their brother Lazarus was a dear friend of Jesus, so people sort of understood. On the morning after that memorable meal and the events that followed, we heard that Jesus had been taken into custody by the High Priest, but we could not get much detail from inside the compound. It was truly alarming to hear that Jesus had been taken to Pontius Pilate for a further ”trial” and possible sentencing. We were part of the crowd that gathered outside the Praetorium and watched the debacle that ensured. It was almost a forgone conclusion that Jesus would be crucified that day. When I looked at his bruised and battered face, his torso damaged by whips and chains, I could hardly recognize him. I was devastated. He looked close to death even then. It got worse as they led him up to the hill where the unthinkable was about to happen. I and Mary, the mother of James, and Salome followed the procession, painful as it was to see, but kept our distance. The crowd was a bit riled up and we feared for our own safety, but could not stay away. It was absolutely heart wrenching to seen those last hours when Jesus was in such agony. His cry ‘My God, My god Why have you forsaken me?” seemed torn from the depths of his soul. We were paralyzed with grief, but managed to follow Joseph of Arimathea as he took Jesus’ body down from the cross, lovingly wrapped it in burial cloths and laid it in a tomb not far away. Mary and I watched to see where they laid him so that after the feast of the Passover, we could bring spices and oils to anoint the body, since that had not yet been done.
When that day after the Sabbath arrived, we crept out as early as possible, without considering how we were to get into the tomb, because of the huge stone. Still devastated and confused, we worried about this all the way to the burial site. What a surprise to see that the stone had been rolled away! It was frightening to consider who had done this and if the body of Jesus had be stolen or desecrated in any way. So much had gone wrong in these last few days, and the whole situation seemed filled with danger. Our apprehension grew as we saw a young man we did not recognize, dressed in a white robe and apparently waiting for us. He told us that Jesus had risen and that we were to tell the disciples that he had gone ahead and would meet them in Galilee. We were absolutely frozen with fear. When know what was going on, and who knew how those disciples would react to our news. Would they blame us for the information we brought or accuse us of lying? In a panic we fled and retuned to where we had been staying; we simply did not know how to react or what to do. On top of everything that had happened, it was just too much…
Jesus, I place myself in those horrific events and wonder how I might have reacted. I think I might have been frightened as well. Lord, help me to contemplate the mystery that is your death and resurrection, not from 2000 years away, but as if I were really there. Help me to see and feel what Mary and the others did. Help me to remember when I acted out of fear at something I did not understand or was afraid to face. Let me see your kindness and understanding, with the knowledge that you are ahead of me and will meet me in my own private Galilee when the time comes. In the meantime, help me to be strong and hopeful, and helpful to others in my life undergoing trials and sorrows. Be with them as you are with me.
