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Down through history we have had numerous distortions of the gospel message. When I was young, our celebration of Lent had clearly lost its focus. The emphasis was on personal sacrifice. Lent was an endurance contest. At noon on Holy Saturday Lent was declared over. It became a moment to gorge ourselves on candies and other elements of our Lenten abstention. This was an incredible caricature of the Church’s message. Jesus got lost in our indulgence.
Today, we have another distortion of Easter by neglect. The big day is Good Friday. For many, if not most, Easter is an afterthought in much of our popular religious practice.
The Church’s teaching is very clear. The Death and Resurrection are one event! We take thirteen weeks to celebrate, in the most solemn and beautiful way, the central reality of our faith, the Pascal Mystery. This one event includes the Passion, Death, Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Christ. This same event is celebrated and experienced in every Mass.
We take a good chunk of the Church year to recall this story. However, it is so much more than a history lesson. In the thirteen weeks from Ash Wednesday to Pentecost we have three seasons of the Church Year. The main purpose of the prayer and penance of Lent is to prepare us to be spiritually ready to celebrate the three holy days of the Triduum, Holy Thursday to Easter Sunday.
We need to understand that this moment of the Passion and Death was accomplished by the union and surrender of Jesus to the Father. This is God’s plan of salvation, life coming through death all wrapped in eternal love. We pray in the Preface of the Mass on Passion Sunday: “though innocent he suffered willingly for sinners and accepted unjust condemnation to save the guilty!”
No matter how clear the ultimate expression of evil is in the suffering of an innocent and loving God, the final statement of God wins out in the Resurrection. The Father has chosen through the cup of Christ’s suffering that the final victory of life and love has engulfed the world in Christ’s saving grace.
To embrace this truth, we have seven weeks of the Easter season as a time of prayer and reflection on the central reality of our faith, the Pascal Mystery, Christ Crucified and Christ Risen.
Here is the bottom line of all this material. The Church understands the Triduum, and the liturgy in general, in this way. It is not a reenactment. It is not simply a repetition of the story no matter how solemn. We do not retell history. The Church teaches that we celebrate the Mystery. In the celebration, we are present to the Mystery, the one and singular and historical event. The power of the Spirit in the Church makes us present to the saving event, the Pascal Mystery.
The celebration is the power and presence of God’s saving grace coming into our lives here and now. This one saving event is not broken into parts. It is the Mystery of the saving action of God in Jesus Christ. We are entering into the deepest reality of our present life. We are experiencing here and now, in our worship, the presence of the saving love calling us to life. When we receive communion, the minister does not say this is a remembrance of the Body of Christ. The words state the reality. This is the Body of Christ!
So, this week we have the most special of all the most sacred events in our liturgy. This is the most hallowed time to celebrate, and in the celebration not only recall, but be present to the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is what liturgy does. It brings us into the presence of the Pascal Mystery that we celebrate. We do not repeat it. We enter into it. This why we are Easter People! We, in turn, are called to live a life of love and service that we reflect our love for our Crucified and Risen Savior.