The Easter Triduum in the Catholic Church leads up to the highest holy day we have. Holy Thursday, also known as celebration of the Last Supper, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, also known as the Mass of Light are a time of preparation and build up to Easter Sunday. After all, this is the day the Lord has made; Let us rejoice and be glad in it! Holy Week, beginning with Palm Sunday and ending with the last moments of the Vigil Mass on Holy Saturday, is what we all wait for throughout our preparation days in Lent. Five weeks of prayer and sacrifice and then BOOM, Holy Week gets here and things really start getting interesting…
Well, interesting if we can get over hearing the same story told every year since either birth (for us cradle Catholics) or conversion (those who made their profession of faith later). If we’ve gone to the same church for a long time, we probably haven’t seen anything new about Holy Week for a while. The main thing is that even if it’s the same thing as last year and the year before and the year before, the celebration is the way it is for a reason. It’s actually a good reason, and each of the pieces of it have their place in the whole.
People in general don’t seem to have any issue with Holy Thursday. Their worst dilemma for the day is how much they have to cover up their legs and feet so no one has to volunteer (or is voluntold) to get their feet washed. I mean, it’s the Last Supper, right? Not so bad. In the same way, most people don’t mind Holy Saturday either. It’s long and pretty involved and for musicians and vocalists the whole thing is pretty daunting, but folks don’t have a problem with bringing light into the darkness.
Right smack in the middle, though, is Good Friday. Many people do not like Good Friday. In a way, I don’t blame them. I mean, what’s “good” about the death of Christ? It’s dark. It’s painful. It’s sorrowful. Depending on how it’s portrayed, it can be downright distressing and horrible. Yelling “crucify him” at our part of the Passion just reminds each one of us of the very real probability that we would have been in that crowd, the same crowd that hailed Jesus just days before as he entered Jerusalem and the same crowd that demanded his execution, or at best, hanging out with Peter denying that he even knew Jesus. So why do we do it? Why is that evil even remembered year after year when we relive the Passion on Good Friday?
We do it because it is a very real part of who we are. The Passion reminds us of each facet of our reaction to Christ, and moreover it sets the stage for the incredible story that comes after. Let’s face it, none of us is perfect. Have you never felt the dilemma of Pilate? You figure out who Christ is and what he means to you, but the crowd pushes so hard that they overtake you and you bow out before it turns really ugly. Or Peter? You know Jesus personally but when things get hairy, you know that if you admit what Christ means to you it will spell certain doom. How about a Pharisee? It was jealousy that pushed their hand. It was fear of losing what they had, even to the Son of God. Or even one of the faces in the crowd? The push and pull of the bodies crammed against you on all sides, screaming for the death of a man. Who can turn that tide? The women wiping the tears and sweat from His face? You want to help but feel powerless against the world, so you do what you can just to try to ease the pain.
So many people think only of the main players in the passion, but there are so many more perspectives. We aren’t only reading it each year, we are recalling the pieces of ourselves that need saving. Fear, jealousy, darkness, and pressure to sin, these things are horribly powerful and are every bit as real today as they were in the time of Jesus two thousand years ago. Jesus knew from even before that what steps must be taken to reach the light. He knew that the seeds would be scattered and fall into these perspectives. He knew that He would have to walk the dark path. He did this because He knew that if we were called to walk it, we would not make it on our own. But still, why bring it all into the forefront so brutally on Good Friday? Aren’t we as Catholics a Resurrection People? Why dwell on the death of Jesus? People die all the time and nothing more than a passing moment in the grand timeline is spent on their remembrance.
We remember. We recall because the light shines so much brighter out of the darkness. The darker the path, the more profound is the light. For the Resurrection to mean anything, to be anything special, it has to come from the path of death. If Jesus had not died, he would have been just another king or prophet or historical person. He’s not. He’s so much more than that. He told us to do this in remembrance of Him, but He didn’t only mean the Last Supper part of it as we celebrate in the mass. It is a part of the whole as much as we are a part of Him. We need both. Joy is joy because of its contrast with sorrow. The sharper the contrast, the deeper the joy. The pain and the heartbreak of Good Friday allows us to fully realize the amazing, breathtaking, astounding gift that we relive every Easter by the resplendent beauty taking the place of the horror. We are a Resurrection People in part because of Good Friday. We don’t worship a king; We are embraced by our Lord!
Good Friday is the darkness that we have to understand in ourselves to breathe the Life of God on Easter. Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Light. He steps out from the grave on Easter morning and we are right next to Him, blinking in the fresh, new light of a brand new day. Only when we let go of those dark pieces of ourselves are we ready to step with Him into that light. It is in that moment that this truly becomes the day the Lord has made, and He made it for us. Rejoice and be glad in it!