As winter and spring continue their see-saw battle for control of Chicago’s weather, the church calendar is moving us toward the solemn observances of Holy Week and Easter, the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. As Jesus was approaching the final days of his life and was staring torture and execution in the face, our four Gospels tell us how clueless the apostles were about the ordeal that Jesus would face, now only days away. In the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, the apostles John and James ask for the best perches in heaven, having not listened at all to Jesus’ lament over his impending death. In the Gospel of Luke, an argument breaks out at the Last Supper over which one of the apostles is the greatest. In the Last Supper account in the Gospel of John, Philip complains that nobody really knows who Jesus is; Thomas complains that nobody knows where Jesus is going; and Peter complains that having his feet washed by the Teacher is entirely inappropriate. Truly, it was only with the grace of the Holy Spirit that the Church ever got off the ground or came to understand what Jesus meant when he called us to be servants to one another.
Next weekend, March 23-24, we begin Holy Week, by recalling Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem. The Gospels tell us that there was a lot of palm waving by the crowds who greeted him and that some bystanders even threw down their cloaks on the road into the city. There was a lot of ceremony, but apparently not a lot of commitment. The crowd could easily be manipulated into a chorus calling for his crucifixion. What followed was a very lonely time for Jesus. He was condemned by both the religious and civil authorities and abandoned by most of his apostles. They were not at all prepared for what happened.
Like the Apostles and the crowd who came out for a parade, we may not have given Holy Week much thought. There was a time, of course, when the culture paused to participate in the Church’s Holy Week rituals. I remember speaking with a man who grew up in the river town of St. Genevieve, Missouri. The town was founded by French speaking Catholics and until recent decades was still largely Catholic. Nobody opened for business on Good Friday. A massive procession worked its way through the city streets. Either you marched or you came out of your house to reverence the cross as it passed by. While such processions still exist in certain neighborhoods in Chicago and several groups do Stations of the Cross through the Loop on Good Friday, most of Chicago barely notices.
Part of the problem is that the world at large has not found an effective way to commercialize Holy Week and Easter. Yes, there are ads for new Easter clothes and special brunch menus, but for broad commercial purposes, it is difficult to strip Easter of its religious roots. It is hard to get around the fact that Easter is about a man who died on a cross and then rose from the dead. The central mystery of our faith does not translate easily into a secular celebration. That problem has been effectively vanquished at Christmas, which is why we start hearing the drumbeat about “the holiday season” four months ahead of time, Christmas has been rebranded “a season for gift fiving” or “a time to dream of peace on earth” or “a beautiful story for children.” We can honor the Biblical account of Christmas without believing that the baby in question turned out to be anything more than an influential teacher or a moral guide. Holy Week and Easter do not receive a secular media blitz. They can sneak up on us.
So, I strongly encourage you to make the liturgical celebrations of Holy Week a real priority in your life this year. One of the FEW payoffs from the COVID pandemic is that many people’s work schedules are more flexible than they used to be. See if you can “calendar in” Holy Thursday, Good Friday services and the Easter Vigil Mass, which is when we celebrate the Sacraments of Initiation with our new Catholics. Holy Week starts with Palm Sunday. Each Mass next weekend will begin with the Blessing of Palms. The liturgical guidelines call for a procession with palms at the beginning of the principal Mass. We have restored that custom at Assumption. The last few years the weather has cooperated and we have had a blessing of palms in the garden at the 10:30 Mass and then a procession around the outside of the garden and into the church. Let those palms that you take home next weekend be a sign of your commitment to follow Christ, not just until Easter but in all the ups and downs of daily life.
Fr. Joe
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