Remembering with the Church

At each celebration of the Eucharist, we hear the Lord’s admonition: “Do this in memory of me.” We read in St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians that as often as the believers gather to break the bread and to pour out the cup of the Lord’s Supper we remember him. This Eucharistic remembering is the manner of the community’s entry into the Lord’s death and rising. It is how we are incorporated into the very Body of Christ.

As we approach Holy Week again this year, as the Church has done for centuries, the whole week is Eucharistic. The week is holy in that we are once again in touch with the presence of God’s saving deeds in Christ. We obey the Lord’s mandate in remembering during this holy week the stories and actions by which we are all saved. In various words and gestures we move in Christ through death to life. The events of history become our present experience of salvation in Christ himself.

To be in touch with this holy remembrance, believers have placed before them signs, symbols, words and gestures, which are to re-initiate the Christian community into Christ. These graced symbols and gestures invite our prayer, our reflection, and participation. These symbols are graced moments in the present with an eye to the past and a heart moved to future hope.

Colors, Space, and Silence
Quietly the colors of Lent to Easter is the changing fabric of our mind’s journey. Passion/Palm Sunday flash with crimson red for the procession of Palms and for the Eucharist which follows. The Lenten purple is laid aside to have the royal procession of the Messiah enter his city. Red in this movement of the liturgy presents us with the victorious entry of the King into his city. More quietly, but eloquently, the red brings us through the reading of John’s Passion and to the Eucharistic remembrance of blood shed for the life of all. The conversation in prayer is between the ignominy of death and the victory of Jesus as presented in the Gospel of John.

The space moves to the holy city of Jerusalem, the place of the Last Supper, the place of the suffering, death, and resurrection of the Lord. The orchestration of the journey is death to life by God’s Holy One.

The liturgy is punctuated with silence for the better hearing of the story of salvation. In the stillness of the muted liturgy we can better see and touch God among us. Holy Week calls us to prayer before, during, and after the liturgies. It is a time to appropriate the mystery of Christ among us.

Holy Thursday
Thursday’s symbols bring us to the place of the Last Supper. It is Passover and Jesus soon will be the new and final Passover from death to life. The meal is as usual about broken bread and wine poured out. We gather to know the Lord in the bread and in the drinking of the cup. Jesus is poured out and we are invited to the same motion.

A powerful action of Holy Thursday comes from John’s description in his gospel. We hear the story and we see the story. “After the meal...” feet are washed and disciples served. The Lord becomes the servant even as he faces becoming the Suffering Servant in the laying down of his life for his friends.

Good Friday
On Good Friday the Eucharist is not celebrated, rather the Church engages in the Solemn Commemoration of the Lord’s Passion. The prayerful memory is made with a Silent Procession and Prostration on the floor in the awful presence of the Father in the face of death. John’s Gospel is proclaimed. Solemn Prayers are prayed for the whole Church and for the world, for believers and non-believers alike. The Cross is presented as the Tree of Life and instrument of victory. In a simple communion service, the faithful encounter the Lord in the Eucharistic bread of the Lord’s Supper from the night before. The Church remains silent at the end.

Holy Saturday
In the Great Vigil, the Church waits in the night for the Resurrection of the Lord. The Easter Fire shatters the night darkness and cold. The Easter Candle is lit from within the fire. Jesus bursts within the community within the darkened Church. Alleluias are sung. The faithful are baptized into Christ’s death and rising; they are confirmed in the Spirit. The newly initiated and the whole Church comes to encounter the Lord at his Table. He is no longer dead. He eats and drinks with them. The faithful know him once again in the breaking of the bread.

CDH