"Let's Go, We Did the Passion Last Night"

The title needs a little explanation.  This has been a weekend of religious observance for we Christians and our Jewish cousins. I am a member of the progenitor Christian faith, Catholicism. And so, on Good Friday, I went for a three hour service--the only day on which Mass is not said anywhere in the world as it commemorates the day on which Christ died on the Cross--at my parish. First, there was the rosary, then the meditations on the Seven Last Words of Christ as he was crucified, then a Veneration of the Cross, then a Communion Service, which includes a lengthy rendition of the events leading up to the death of Christ, the betrayal by his friend, his arrest, his condemnation by the people, before the reluctant Pilate, the scourging, the walk to Calvary, and of course,  the death in apparent ignominy. All through these activities, there was the opportunity for the Sacrament of Reconciliation (formerly known as Confession).

It was pretty packed. Interestingly, since our pastor died at the beginning of Lent, our parish has seen an uptick of attendance. It isn't necessarily because people are aware of his death. I think it is like he (and our prior pastor) is being an intercessor and asking the Lord to keep us going with commitment and joy. I was in the second to last row, and behind me were several parishioners I know well, all of them men older than me (and I am no spring chicken). Two of them were there for the rosary, and the Seven Last Words, and then suddenly, I heard one say to the other, "Let's Go, We Did the Passion Last Night." It's a long three hours. I knew what they meant. They had been at the service the evening before where the Passion narrative is read also, a couple of hour service. There is no obligation to go to the Thursday and Friday portions of the Triduum, and particularly with all the standing and kneeling, it is hard on even the youngest churchgoer, let alone people of a "certain age". But I found myself smiling because something in what the man said to his friend, in an unintentional way, highlighted the overall challenge of our time. We call the millennial generation "snowflakes" because everything is too hard for them and they want everything given to them. But in truth, all of us humans, even the ones among us who call ourselves practitioners of our religions, are "snowflakes" when it comes to suffering. Actually, let me limit it to us religious Christian folk, because we are the ones who say that suffering is the door through which we must go, in following the example of the God-Man, Christ, to the Resurrection we celebrate today. Some people experience the greatest of difficulty, but most of us face ordinary difficulty and lament it as if it is something we have a "right" to escape. That's what I thought of, not about the speaker, but about myself, when I heard the man say, "We did the passion last night." I tell myself I have had my share of struggle. But that's the point. There is no "proper" share. Some get less. Some get more. But we all get it and it would happen whether or not we believe in salvation. But IF I believe, then it is not only something that I cannot walk away from, this Passion, but I ought not to want to walk away from it because it is the only way to the beginning, back to Paradise, via the action of Christ on the Cross. And yet, here I am every Lent resisting what I purportedly believe. And then the Lord puts something in front of me that is the last thing I want to do, or to deal with, and I am forced to confront it. And I bray like a donkey (thanks to St. Escriva for that image) all the way through the challenge.  It doesn't matter what that is for purposes of this day's blog, but something came to me literally on Ash Wednesday lasting all the way through to to today, and perhaps for a while longer.  It is something that is no accident.  It may help another. It will teach me about myself, and my frailty as a human being, but especially as a Christian. I can try to convince myself that I am a good follower of Christ, but when "push comes to shove" I prove myself to be one of those snowflakes, and a quickly melting one at that. I ask Him to give me humility, and then when He sends me that which is to make me humble, I say, "Oh, no, not this, not this!"

That's what I thought about when I heard the man in the pew say, "Let's go, We Did the Passion Last Night." Me, saying, "Ok, I did enough good stuff. Now time to go have some fun!" It's like I'm ticking off the celestial box of good deeds. That's not what Christ did. Nor is it what He asks us to do in following Him. There is always suffering. The way we see it, there was no meaning to the suffering before He broke into time, and took suffering itself to Him and opened again the door to Heaven. If I am going to have to suffer, and I will, I like the idea that He gave it meaning better than that it has none. I will forget my resolve, as always I do, when something God expects more of me has me saying, "But I did the Passion last night" or some variety of the phrase. But hopefully, when I am sitting in the Church before the Tabernacle looking at the Crucifix and the most passionate of Passions, I will remember what it is to be a Christian.