GOOD FRIDAY
If there is any danger during the Triduum (three days) it is merely the accentuated danger Christians face any other time of their lives: to reduce faith to an exercise of “remember when.” The risk is to reduce the life of faith to nothing more than nostalgia, nothing more than a passion play about an event that happened a long time ago which we stand on the side-lines and watch like hot-dog eating, soda-sipping non-implicated spectators. In reality (and in practice), as Christians we are called to be “back to the future” people. What does that mean?
Here Catholic Eucharistic theology informs how we participate in the holy foolishness of these holy days (at the core not only of Catholicism but of all Christian traditions). At the center of our Eucharistic theology is the Greek word anamnesis which is a fancy sounding Greek word that refers to a radical, profound, and rather unique way of understanding what we mean by remember. Here remembering is not mere reminiscing or recollection but rather a participative act by which the community intentionally and consciously re-members themselves to a particular person (Jesus) and particular events (most notably his suffering, death, and resurrection) in such a way that the truth of that person and the power of those events become present, active, and real here and now. The re-membering is not merely a mental revisiting of an historical event, but rather an existential, spiritual experience in which the community re-connects themselves to these past events so intently and so fully that not only are we changed but the future is broken open and accessible to new possibilities and transformation as well. Anamnesis does more than put us in touch with the historical passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It offers us a new hope that penetrates the doubt and despair frequently associated with suffering and death. It presents an alternative perception and understanding of our own historical reality that we can believe and participate in, namely, the new future given by God in and through Jesus’ refutation of death by his death on the cross (See Brueggeman’s The Prophetic Imagination).
To the extent that we understand, accept, are energized by, and committed to the participative nature of the paschal mystery, to that degree we are a community of integrity. To the extent that we tell the story every year, sing the songs, safely go through the motions but fail to allow the paschal story to be our story and our summons today, to that degree it is nothing more than nostalgia and we are a community indicted.
Whether Eucharist or Triduum (and each are participative acts of the one same mystery), each reminds us that as partners of Jesus we are implicated in this mystery, we are summoned to participate in it and to make it real, so that the trajectory of our lives is always “back to the future.” Authentic faith is only about the past if the core truth of the past is made present and thus capable of altering the future in a way that is compatible with the dream of God. Gabriel Marcel captured this conviction when he wrote, “Hope is a memory of the future.”
So, the danger of these days is that we diminish them to a touching historical memory or a pageant play we can sit back and watch from a safe distance. Little more than guilty bystanders. Pass the popcorn. The danger is that we stand and sing “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” and treat it as nothing more than a distant memory set to music. This is the exact opposite of what this Negro spiritual originally meant in the African American community. There it represented an intimate connection with ancestors who were enslaved or with family and friends who had been lynched in an all-too real and all too recent crucible in the American South. Consequently, they found solace and subversive hope in the sung-story of Jesus who too was beaten and tortured. But for most of us this is probably not our song, and not our most important question.
The question is not were we there then but are we here now and awake now and aware now and concerned now and energized to do something about now when they nail “him” to the tree or lay “her” in the grave?
Are we foolish enough to dare to ask these implicating questions: Where do people in this place and in this time need to have their feet washed?
Where and with whom should we be breaking bread around our tables so that the tables in our daily lives become tables of new life and holy communion? And not only bread broken but something of our lives as well that can then be shared with those who are hungry for so many things within our power to provide?
Where, like Jesus, are people being denied their sacred identity and dignity?
Where are people being mocked, ridiculed, or persecuted?
Where are people or other-than-humans hiddenly or publicly suffering?
Where and in whose bodily form is Jesus suffering on the cross today and what must we do to take them down from that cross?
So, these are the foolish days inviting us to live in foolish ways. Welcome to the Feast of Fools. Let us now partake.