Printed Triduum Reflection

[Rev. Bob Johnnene OFD]

Printed Triduum Reflection
A Reflection for the Sacred Triduum, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday
By Rev. Robert Francis Johnnene
Mission Sts. Sergius & Bacchus/ Franciscans Divine Mercy
Divine Mercy Old Catholic Parish Franklin/Worcester MA
Independent Catholic Church of the Americas
www.missionstsergius.org
www.franciscansdivinemercy.org

In these final days of Lent, I think about how we betray Christ with our unchristian actions every day.
All around us we see and hear governments, churches and individual people proposing things that fly in the face of what Christians are supposed to be thinking and doing.
A few years’ back there was a song sung often in church that said; “They Will Know We Are Christians By Our Love”. We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord, We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord, And we pray that all unity may one day be restored, And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love. They will know we are Christians by our love, We will work with each other, we will work side by side, We will work with each other, we will work side by side, And we'll guard each one's dignity and save each one's pride, And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love. They will know we are Christians by our love, by our love, by our love And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love…..And together we'll spread the news that God is in our land, And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love…. Love is patient, love is kind, Never boasts, not full of pride, Always hopes, always trusts, The evidence of Christ in us. They will know we are Christians by our love, By our love, by our love, And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, They will know we are Christians by our love”.
What has happened to this basic concept of the Christian faith?
Instead of working together for a better world we seem to be fighting each other. Instead of guarding everyone’s dignity and saving each one’s pride we seem to be degrading people because of how God created them.
Even in these times of recession people seem to be so wrapped up in themselves and in acquiring material goods and wealth that they have lost sight of the poor and needy.
We have a government that has spent trillions bailing out the corporations that used the bailout monies to reward their executives and stockholders.
Attempts have been made to prevent people from receiving medical help unless they can prove they are citizens.
These are not the qualities of a people who are supposed to have compassion, mercy, forgiveness and love for ALL God’s children.
When did the basic Christian ideals change?
In these final days as the Jewish Passover feast is begins at sundown Monday evening, the moment that Jesus gave us a lasting memorial to his being and gave us the Bread of life in the Eucharist.
For more than 3000 years, the Jewish people have celebrated a Seder which is called Pesakh, Pesach, Pesah), or Festival of Unleavened Bread in remembrance of the exodus from Egypt. The Exodus includes the deliverance from slavery in Egypt as well as the covenant between God and His people at Sinai. Jesus and His followers, like faithful Jewish person gathered together to fulfill their obligation of celebrating the memorial of the feast of Passover. The word for memorial in Hebrew is Zikkaron and in Greek is ( anamnesis) meaning a liturgical celebration that celebrates and re-presents past mysteries of salvation.
If you remember the story, Moses told his people to sacrifice an unblemished young lamb and slaughter it and spread the blood on the doorposts and lintels of their homes, in that way the angel of Death that would sweep through Egypt would spare all those within.
The Jewish people were told to remember this passing on the fourteenth day of the first month of their calendar year. (This year 2007, the Passover began at sundown Monday April 2) This memorial celebration is what Jesus and His followers were celebrating.
The Passover “Haggadah” or telling is broken into 15 divisions or order of the Seder.
The Passover celebration today is a celebration of all the deliverances God has provided and Jews still look for the final deliverance and exodus of the coming of the Messiah.
Christians see Christ as the person who fulfilled all things that the prophets foretold the Messiah. Even the title “Christ” means the anointed one, which is what Messiah means in Hebrew.
Christ told us he came to bring us a new covenant, Christ became the sacrificial Lamb, It was His blood that set us free from the bondage of sin. Even the words that Jesus spoke and we proclaim at every liturgy of the Eucharist “ Blessed are you O Lord our God, king of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth” in Hebrew (Barukh ata Adonay, Elohenu, melekh ha olam, Ha motzi lechem min ha aretz) are the words Jesus spoke.
When Jesus took the bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to His apostles saying, “This is my Body, take and eat” and the wine “This is my Blood, the Blood of the new covenant, it will be shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven. Do this is remembrance of me” He became the sacrificial lamb of the Passover.
Every time we partake in the Eucharistic Celebration we are reliving the Passover Celebration, we are carrying out the command of Jesus Christ that we celebrate the memorial feast “The memorial feast of our redemption”, we recall the memory of Jesus Christ, His suffering, death and resurrection. It is most unfortunate that our English language does not really convey very well the true biblical meaning of memorial (anamnesis {GREEK} and Zikkaron {Hebrew}.
Like the Jewish people today who faithfully follow the old covenant made by Moses with God. We, who believe Christ to be the promised one of the prophets, by our participating in the Eucharistic Liturgy, personally die and rise with Christ and we become redeemed together with Him.
By understanding the Passover, we better can understand the beautiful and fulfilling mystery of our faith and of the Eucharistic celebration. Let us work together to realize that as true believers of Christ we need to honor and respect the traditions of the faith that gave us our redeemer and savior Jesus Christ.
PRAYER:
Blessed are you, O Lord God, king of the universe, who has redeemed us from the land of bondage to sin and brought us to freedom and salvation by your willingness to become the sacrificial lamb of the new covenant. Unite your brothers and sisters of all nations on this earth your Almighty Father created together in love and unity so that we can gather as one family giving Almighty God and you thanksgiving and praise. AMEN
Let’s prepare ourselves to welcome the Resurrection of Christ on Easter Sunday with a resolve to live our lives in keeping with Christ’s teachings and more like the words of song THEY WILL KNOW WE ARE CHRISTIANS BY OUR LOVE so that, Everyone we encounter will know we are Christians by our love for ALL of God’s Children not just the select few that fit our comfort zone.
The evidence of Christ in us will be if we practice St. Paul’s words; “Love is patient, love is kind, Never boasts, is not full of pride, Always hopes, and trusts” Let’s always show our faith and love of God by doing the correct things.
After celebrating the traditional Sedar Christ and His apostles went out to the Garden of Olives to pray and meditate and Christ told the apostles to stay where they were as he went off to pray by Himself. Now we need to remember that Christ knew what was about to transpire, and we can read it in Luke 25 where it relates the story; “Pray that you will not fall into temptation.” Christ withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.”
I love that line in the Gospel, because it reminds me that we can ask God to lift burdens we are faced with, if Christ could do it so can we. The gospel story goes on to tell how Christ was arrested and dragged off while the apostles ran away. Again it helps us to accept our fears when we are faced with difficulties because if the apostles, who eventually received the Holy Spirit and established the 6 churches that because the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church went off and hid, then we who want to hide from adversity are in good company.
When Jesus was arrested the gospel goes on to tell us that; Then Jesus said to the chief priests, the officers of the temple guard, and the elders, who had come for him, “Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come with swords and clubs? Every day I was with you in the temple courts, and you did not lay a hand on me. But this is your hour—when darkness reigns.”
The hour of darkness, and truly it was a dark hour, just imagine all that is described in the telling of the Passion of Christ, his beating, scourging with whips that had large thorns entangled within them. For any who saw the movie THE PASSION OF CHRIST, which many critics said was too graphic and horrid because of the violence inflicted on Christ and the blood that it showed being shed, historians have claimed that it was a true depiction of what Christ endured, and he endured it all for us, He endured it all so that we could have forgiveness of our Sins and everlasting life.
In many churches there is a tradition during lent, but especially on Good Friday to follow the passion of Christ through The stations of the cross, Stations of the Cross (or Way of the Cross; in Latin it is Via Crucis; or Via Delorosa which means Way of Sorrows. It is a series of artistic representations, very often sculptural, depicting the final hours or Passion of Christ. The tradition of the Stations began with the Seraphic Father of All Franciscan Communities; St. Francis of Assisi, just as the tradition of the Nativity Crèche began with him. On Good Friday the Stations are often followed by the veneration of the Cross, where a large cross is displayed and people come forward to kiss the cross or one of the wounds depicted on the corpus of Christ.
“We Adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the World” these words we say during the Stations of the Cross are a powerful affirmation of what this entire Lenten season, especially what we commemorate on Good Friday, is all about.
Without Christ’s death, we would not have the gift of redemption. When Jesus went to the cross, he did so willingly. He knew that he was taking all the sins of the world with him. That by the shedding of His blood, Christ made peace by reconciling everything with God according to Saint Paul.
By Christ’s death, a new light was brought to all men.
By his death, Christ asks us to emulate him and willingly pick up the crosses we are burdened with and to follow him.
In today’s society there are many crosses being offered for us to take up. Can we carry the cross of speaking out against injustice even though it may bring us scorn and reproach by friends and family? Can we speak out against acts of discrimination and bigotry even though by doing so we may find ourselves in the minority? Can we have the courage to speak out against Government leaders who are insolent and refuse to serve the will of the majority of people they are supposed to represent? Do we have what it takes to allow ourselves to be stripped of all our pretensions and allow the world to see our true selves? Can we give of ourselves enough to be of assistance to those who are not able to provide the basic necessities of life for themselves?
All these are things that require us to give of ourselves and deny ourselves of being comfortable.
By Christ’s offering himself up as the sacrificial lamb on the cross we have been given the promise of Salvation, peace, compassion, love and triumph.
Without the cross, the tree that gave us the promise of everlasting life, we would still be floundering around in the darkness of sin and confusion.
The Cross becomes a symbol of triumph, the triumph of Christ over the power of evil. The completion of the mission to overcome the forces of evil is now in our ballpark. Are we up to the challenge?
The triumph of Christ is not something of the past, it is a living thing. It is something we are called to live every day. When we are faced with oppression, illness, rejection, alienation we need to recall that all these were faced by Jesus Christ. By his life and death, Christ made holy every aspect of the human experience. We need to look upon our lives and live them with that in mind. Our lives are holy, they are holy if we are willing to work hard to live by the example Christ gave us.
Christ spoke out against injustice, so must we. Christ welcomed the outcast, so must we. Christ challenged the rules of the High Priests and the Sanhedrin and government of his day, so must we. When our government is wrong and creates laws that are oppressive, we need to speak out loudly against them. When our government our Religious leaders insist on mandating anything that is contradictory to the teaching and example that Christ gave us we need to be willing to challenge them as Christ did. By living in this way we sanctify Christ’s passion and relive it daily by our willingness to take up our crosses and carry them willingly.
The cross is a symbol of Christ’s triumph and this Paschal Season is our liturgical means of participating in Christ’s gift of redemption. Our challenge is to live it every day of every year.
On Good Friday we celebrate the love of God; a love so great it allows us, even urges us to be co-workers in Christ’s great act of love by sacrificing Himself on the cross for us.
Let us then celebrate Christ’s willingness to suffer the indignities of the passion and a criminal’s death on the cross, which brought us the forgiveness of our sins and our salvation and make it ours by being faithful to Him and living daily carrying our crosses proudly for all the world to see.
The Triduum ends with the Easter vigil on Saturday and it is a celebration of life. The Waters used in Baptism are blessed; there is the symbolic “New Fire” symbolizing That for those who walked in the darkness of Sin, Christ is the bright light that will guide us into our heavenly abode.
The Vigil service begins in darkness to symbolize the darkness of sin and the priest proclaims the following prayer; O God, who through your son bestowed upon the faithful the fire of your glory, sanctify this new fire we pray and grant that by these paschal celebrations we may be so inflamed with heavenly desires, that with minds made pure we may attain festivities of unending splendor.”
I will end this reflection for the Triduum, or holiest days of the year, with that prayer for us all and I look forward to our coming together again when I reflect on the Easter Readings and celebration of Christ’s conquering death and sin by resurrecting form the dead.