Faithful Remnant

With Holy Week and Easter having become victims of last year’s Church closures, it means that we haven’t observed these sacred days for two years now. Long-lived customs can go by the wayside surprisingly quickly when suspended, especially by edict. It’s up to us to keep our traditions vibrant and continuous, even though we may have gotten out of practice. Although we were permitted to celebrate Christmas openly this year, people stayed away in droves, fearing the Church might be overcrowded as in former years, leaving us with a mostly empty space for Christmas Masses, despite our lengthy and involved preparations.

Will the same thing take place this Easter? I fear that it’s likely. With the pandemic continuing, vaccinations slow in coming, and the Bishops’ retaining the abrogation of the Sunday Mass Obligation, many will feel justified to remain at home. Holy Week Masses and Services have never been crowded, with the richness of the sacred liturgies appealing to fewer people. We will continue, of course, but with a few slight modifications: The Palm Sunday Procession will be optional; Washing of the Feet on Holy Thursday eliminated and Adoration abbreviated; Veneration of the Cross on Good Friday reimagined. These adaptations will feel strange, but the essence of the holy days will remain. We’ve known them for too many years to allow temporary changes to devoid these practices of their meaning.

The Death and Resurrection of the Lord are at the center of our Catholic belief in Redemption. Although many people feel a closer or more sentimental link to Christmas, this event is not even mentioned in two of the four Gospels. This is because, as my Scripture Professor at Seminary explained it, the Gospels were likely written “backwards,” meaning that the Evangelists began with the Resurrection and worked their way back through the teaching, ministry and miracles of the Lord’s public life. Matthew and Luke went back to the Lord’s Nativity; John went all the way back to “the beginning.” Mark, the first of the Gospels to be written, takes the reader back only to the preaching of John the Baptist and the Lord’s Baptism. My prof even described the Gospel of John as “a Passion Narrative with a very long introduction.”

We cover the length of the Lord’s life each year, with a change of emphasis depending upon which year in the three-year cycle of Readings we happen to find ourselves. In Holy Week, the Passion of Saint John is always read on Good Friday, but the Passion read on Palm Sunday rotates. This year we will hear Saint Mark’s version. Lacking our missalettes, we will be unable to read the Passion in the “Reader’s Theater” approach of the past fifty years. Instead, on both Palm Sunday and Good Friday the Celebrant will proclaim the Passion as the people in the pews listen.

Pope Benedict famously predicted, way back in 1969, that we would become a “smaller, but purer Church.” The smallness has become visible; the purification must take place in order that the Faith might be handed down to the next generations. It’s up to us, pandemic or not, to maintain the Faith as that Faithful Remnant on whom the Lord will continue to build His Church.