By Father Joseph of St. Jude Parish
The writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible seems quite depressed. Perhaps most people know that book through the famous Byrds song “Turn, Turn, Turn” but the book itself is far more despairing of the human condition. Consider this opening of the book:
Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth,
vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!
What profit have we from all the toil
which we toil at under the sun?
One generation departs and another generation comes,
but the world forever stays.
The sun rises and the sun sets;
then it presses on to the place where it rises.
Shifting south, then north,
back and forth shifts the wind, constantly shifting its course.
All rivers flow to the sea,
yet never does the sea become full.
To the place where they flow,
the rivers continue to flow.
All things are wearisome,
too wearisome for words.
The eye is not satisfied by seeing
nor has the ear enough of hearing.
What has been, that will be; what has been done, that will be done. Nothing is new under the sun!
Indeed, it does look like time is cyclical, even meaningless. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus famously quipped, You can never step into the same river twice, because all is constant change, a cycle that we are trapped in but can never break free.
But there is a way out of the seemingly-endless cycles of nature and life. And that is to take the cycle and go deeper. Life is not a circle; it is a corkscrew. It goes around and around, but also hopefully goes deeper with each passing year.
I was thinking of this in reference to two things this past week. One, of course, is the beginning of a new Spring (my favorite season!). Yet another season passes—but it’s not meaningless if I am able to more deeply appreciate, enjoy, and learn from the passing season. Recently someone said to me, “Just think—I only have 40 more Christmases!” It was a sobering thought—how many more Springs will we get to enjoy? Rather than feeling drudgery at the return of the cycle of seasons (and the cycle of life), we ought to feel grateful that we get to experience it again and again, going deeper each time into the mystery of the rhythms of life.
But the other thing on my mind is Easter. It’s a bit mind-boggling to consider that there have been less than 2,000 Easters in history—and we get to celebrate another one in a few weeks. But rather than this being an exact carbon-copy of last Easter (and the fifty Easters before it), will we be “going deeper” into the mystery of what Christ did for us in His death and Resurrection?
How can we dive into the Paschal Mystery (Christ’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection)? The best way is to attend all three Triduum Liturgies. Triduum, meaning “Three Days”, are the Holy Thursday Mass, Good Friday Service of the Lord’s Passion, and Easter Vigil. I believe wholeheartedly that you cannot understand Christianity unless you participate in the Triduum. They are Masses unlike any other.
At Holy Thursday, we wash the feet of parishioners to symbolize what Christ did for His Apostles. At Good Friday, we kiss a cross to recall Christ’s sacrifice. At Easter Vigil, we begin with a bonfire and a darkened church, lit only by candles. If you want to have a rich Easter where you can truly enter into the mystery, please come to the Triduum—it will absolutely change the way you see your faith.
It is a real gift that we have solid, unchanging, cyclical “touchstones” such as seasons and feasts. Without them, we would feel adrift in the modern world. Perhaps this is why so many people who have jettisoned religion and live in a digital world feel ungrounded, aimless, lost. Once I attended a Walk For the Cure walk-a-thon at a local park with my pastor. They had a beautiful ceremony where they lit luminaries and had music playing with pictures of those who are fighting cancer battles projected onto a screen. My pastor turned to me and said, wisely, “See how the human heart needs rituals!”
Rather than the meaninglessness that the author of Ecclesiastes writes about, the cycles of nature – and the cycles of the Feast Days of our Catholic Faith – are the solid rhythms upon which we build our lives. We fast and we feast; we rejoice and we repent; we remember and we look forward. Every year we have the opportunity to deepen our understanding of – and participation in – the mysteries of the coming Feasts. Will you prepare your heart for a rich Easter by engaging in the Triduum liturgies this year?
