Triduum 2023
Fr Ben Riley
Holy Thursday
If you remember two weeks ago, I spoke about the clergy continuing education classes. I mentioned that Father Leo, a renowned chef, gave the talks, and that all of the talks, somehow, had to do with food. Father Leo asked us about our favorite foods. He asked what food we would serve to Jesus if we got the chance. He asked us about hunger and satisfaction. But even more than food, Father Leo’s talks were about a meal, a sacred meal. Specifically, Father Leo wanted to express the importance of communion that takes place around the family table, because what happens around your dinner table is a continuation of what happens on this altar.
It is a great joy, that today we celebrate the institution of the Mass, the institution of the priesthood, and, yes, the institution of that sacred meal, the Eucharistic. The Eucharist, which Vatican II called the source and summit of the Christian life. It is the beginning and the end, from which all things come and to which, all will return. The body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus.
As we celebrate the institution of the Eucharist, the Church in her wisdom has also deemed this season a time of Eucharistic Revival. Over the next three years, we as a Church, as the mystical Body of Christ, will have the opportunity to remind ourselves of the singular importance of this sacrament. A Eucharistic Shrine is going to be designated at Saint Edward’s Church in little Rock, one of the most beautiful churches in the state. And our parish will offer a pilgrimage to the shrine during this time of eucharistic revival. We will visit the shrine, the diocese headquarters, the Cathedral of Saint Andrew, and the House of Formation, where some of our seminarians live and study.
To prepare ourselves for this three-year Eucharistic Revival, let’s call to mind a strange and truly surprising position that the Church has held across the centuries, from the very beginning: this is that Jesus is really, truly, and substantially present in the Eucharist. That probably doesn’t come as a surprise, but still, it raises a question, how do we know that the Eucharist is the Body of Christ and not just a symbol? As always, let’s turn to scripture.
I think the best description is found in the 6th chapter of John, the bread of life discourse, and I encourage you to read it in your prayer time. Jesus identifies Himself as the living bread come down from heaven, and then He says, “Amen, Amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.”
It’s important to understand how revolting this was to the people of Jesus’ time. For Jews in the first century, to eat an animal’s flesh, with blood, was forbidden, and so how much more forbidden would it be to eat human flesh and drink human blood. It would have been extremely shocking, and even the disciples were confused. And so, the people voice their concerns. “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph? Do we not know his father and mother? Then how can he say, I have come down from heaven? How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Sadly, many people did reject the words of Christ. Faced with opposition we might expect Jesus to soften his language a bit, but he does just the opposite and uses even stronger language. He says, “My flesh is real food; my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.”
This is the foundation of the Church’s teaching, up and down the centuries: that Jesus is really, truly, and substantially, present in the Eucharist. Now how can we begin to explain it? How to make sense of this strange teaching? It all comes down to who Jesus is. It comes down to who He claimed to be.
If Jesus were simply a prophet, or a moral teacher, he could speak symbolically and we could accept it symbolically. But Jesus is not simply one figure among many, he isn’t simply a religious leader. He is God. He is God from God, light from light, true God from true God. And therefore, what he says, happens.
We read in the book of Genesis that God said, “Let there be light” and there was light. We read in the Gospels that Jesus said to Lazarus, “Come forth,” and the dead man came forth. The God man said, “Rise, take up your mat and walk.” He said, to the leper, “I do will it, be made clean.” He said, “Your sins are forgiven.” When God speaks, things happen. And so why should we be surprised when he says, “This is my body; this is my blood. Do this in remembrance of me.” Let’s take him at his word.
We have been given such a great gift. By receiving the Eucharist, we enter into the life of Christ, we are conformed to Him. You have heard the phrase, you are what you eat. Well, by consuming the Eucharist, Christ’s divinity shines through us. Eucharistic adoration will be available in the chapel until 11 o’clock tonight, and a Knight of Columbus will be in the chapel keeping vigil. Come, adore Jesus in the blessed sacrament. Come, gaze upon Him who died for the salvation of the world. Come, so that you may go forth and proclaim that, Jesus Christ is Lord!
Good Friday
Historians speculate that the ancient Persians probably invented crucifixion, but there’s no doubt that the Romans perfected the practice. The condemned person was made to carry not the whole cross but the horizontal beam. At the place of crucifixion, it was connected to a vertical beam that was already standing. Those to be executed, were stripped naked. That was part of the torture of the cross, the humiliation of it. They crucified Jesus in a very public place right near the city walls, so people coming and going from the city could see. The Romans would fix them to the cross either with ropes or with nails, and there’s archaeological evidence of this. Giant Roman nails were driven into the wrist or hand of the victim.
Excruciating pain. Our word for the worst kind of pain, “excruciating”, comes from this practice. “Ex-cru-sha” means “from the cross.” It would be difficult for the person to breathe while hanging from the nails, and so he’d have to rock up and down on the crucified hands to catch his breath. This would go on for hours or, in some cases, for days. And when the person finally died, the body was typically left on the cross, exposed to the elements, and available to the wild animals to devour.
Here’s the great question, echoed up and down the centuries. Why in the world do we gather here and look intently at a cross? If people from the ancient world were to get in a time machine, and see us here, in a religious place, gazing at a crucified person, they would think we’d lost our minds. And even today, in our society, the image of the cross has largely lost its meaning. We see it so often as a decoration on walls, at the top of churches, or on a neckless, that we have become numb to its true meaning. But what is this true meaning?
Let me suggest an interpretation given by Jesus himself. He says, that the serpent was lifted up in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up. The reference here is to that story in the book of Numbers. The people of Israel were bitten by Seraph serpents, and many were dying. Moses is told to make a bronze serpent, put it on a pole and lift it up. Those who have been bitten and look at it will be healed. So the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that we who look at Him are healed. Well, what could this possibly mean?
Anyone who’s been through counseling or therapy or spiritual direction, anyone who has wrestled with fears and anxieties knows, the answer is never found in denying or repressing or running away from fears, but rather by looking at them, by seeing them. The idea is that in an effort to avoid pain, we disassociate ourselves from fears. Here I am, but my fear is over there. Here I am, and my fears are buried deep inside. We all do this, myself included. But if we have the courage to look at our fears, we disempower them.
And this is what we are expected to do today. Look at the cross. What do you see? Everything that frightens us. Physical suffering, yes, the outer limit of bodily pain, yes, the marring and ruin of the body, yes, but more than that, humiliation. We see false accusation, the effects of cruelty and hatred, and we see injustice. In the passion narrative we see all the things that frighten us, and then we see death itself. But that’s not all we see.
We see the God, who has accompanied us into all of our fears. Paul says to the Philippians, “Though he was in the form of God, he did not deem equality with God a thing to be grasped. But rather he emptied himself, and took the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men. He was known to be of human estate, and it was thus that he humbled himself. Obediently accepting death, even death on a cross.”
The son of God in all his glory, came all the way down into our humiliation, into our physical suffering, into our fear of death, into the effects of false accusation, injustice, and cruelty. God came all the way down so that now we know, even in our worst fears, that we are accompanied by the divine love.
So why is his death on the cross the best way possible for our salvation? Let’s say that Jesus had just come into the world and all he did was just teach people, here’s the way to be good and if you do that and follow my commandments you can go to heaven. He could have done that, but by dying Jesus was teaching us that it was worth it, in the eyes of God the Father, to give His life in exchange for yours. In the Gospel of John it says, “Father may they know that you have loved them even as you have loved me.” That’s an astounding statement. It almost sounds like a heresy. God loves us with the same intensity of love with which he loves His eternally begotten son. And that means the salvation of man in the eyes of God, is a greater good than the life of God. He was willing to exchange the life of God for the salvation of man, and that means in God’s eyes we have an infinite dignity. And if God had not died in that way we would never understand just how much God loves us.
The cross, the image of torture and humiliation that the Romans used to instill fear, the first Christians held it up as a taunt. “You think that scares us? We look right at it, because we know the love of God is more powerful than anything the world can throw at us!”
And that’s why the early Christians began to use language like redemption, liberation, and salvation, in connection to that cross. Because if God has the power to take an instrument of torture and transfigure it into the means of our salvation, then He certainly has the power to take our fears, our anxieties, our pain, and even our sin, and transfigure it into something that gives Him glory. What that something is, I don’t know. That is what we call faith. Look at the cross, embrace it, kiss it, and have faith that God helps you carry yours.
Easter Sunday
Three years ago, on my birthday, the rector of Saint Meinrad Seminary, Father Denis, called all the seminarians, about a hundred and twenty of us, into the auditorium. We were only two and a half months into the Spring semester of 2020, but we were being sent home.The Covid-19 virus had spread to the United States, been designated as a pandemic, and Father Denis could no longer guarantee our safety. So we, like so many other students, teachers, and workers around the country, were sent home.
On the drive home Joseph Friend, now Father Joseph Friend, and I guessed and made conjectures about what would happen next. How long would this last, would our friends and family stay safe, would we get sick, and would our upcoming ordinations happen or be postponed? One thing we didn’t talk about was, how we would celebrate Holy Week and Easter Sunday. It’s hard to believe, but three years ago I celebrated Easter on my computer. For three months,most of us, unless you attended an outdoor Mass, didn’t receive the Eucharist. It’s hard to believe, and we are still reeling from the effects.
The loss of friends and loved ones, economic turmoil, even more divisive politics, protests, riots, and now a vicious war in Ukraine: the ways we have struggled are innumerable, they continue now, and will continue for some time to come. Easter Sunday, the significance of what this day means, does not take away our struggles, it shows us how to orient them toward the glory of God.
Jesus is risen, the tomb is empty. And the effects of this cosmic break in the order of the universe must be addressed. Jesus, a man who healed the sick, preached the good news to the poor, and liberty to captives, who was executed on a cross, a man who claimed to be the Son of God, has risen from the dead. If this is not true, if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then our being here is fruitless, and our worship laughable. Saint Paul put it this way,“If Jesus is not raised from the dead, our preaching is in vain, and we are the most pitiable of men.”
But if he did rise from the dead, then he is the Son of God, and this would necessitate a radical change in the way we view the world, our lives, and the hardships we endure. If Jesus is risen, then two things become vivid for us.
First, that this life is not the end. Our culture really needs to hear this message. This life that we experience with our senses, reason through or intellect, and enjoy through our emotions. Of course, it’s real, but there is a tendency in society today that tries to see the fragility of our material world as proof of a non-caring cosmic joke, that we are here as a statistical anomaly and nothing more. And even some people believe that we are living in a computer simulation. Ridiculous!
Christ is risen, the tomb is empty, and Jesus didn’t die for nothing. Our creed speaks of God the visible, and the invisible. If the tomb is empty, if Jesus is risen, then there is an existence beyond this existence, and our lives are ordered toward it. The resurrection is for us the opening of a door, a door to eternal live. Where we will encounter a goodness, a truth, and a beauty that goes beyond what we experience here, that goes beyond what we are capable of comprehending. The resurrection gives us a higher purpose to strive for, and death is not the final word. Paul says, “Death where is thy sting?” To speak of death is to speak of the end, but the resurrection tells us, there is something beyond this world. And it is something we should yearn for and strive towards.
The second thing that the empty tomb brings into view for us, is hope through the mercy of God. The tomb is empty, and how incredible is it that something empty, could fill us with such joy. Through the resurrection, the path of salvation has been opened for everyone. By dying on the cross, an innocent Jesus took onto himself the sins of the world. The Son of God revealed what price the children of God are worth, the blood of divine mercy.
The resurrection is not a one-off mystical experience, but a present and ongoing spiritual reality. A reality that presents itself on this altar. Through our sin, we rebel and run away from the Father, but as we run away from the father, we run toward the divine mercy of the Son. And if we accept the mercy of the son, then through him, we rise from the dead and return to the Farther. By the cross, the Father called the Son back to himself through the grace of the Holy Spirit, and this is how he calls us back to himself.
Jesus did not say this life would be easy, the past few years have been evidence of that. But he did say, “Pick up your cross and follow me.” The cross, meant to be an instrument of torture, has become for us the means of our salvation. May you have a very Happy Easter, rejoicing in the mercy of God and the promise of eternal life.