From the Mouths of Children and Babes

While this title might seem more appropriate to Greg's post below, I think it is applicable here too,

Earlier today I was checking my voicemail messages. (Because I am now home in the hinterlands, I have to wait until going to town before I get decent cell phone reception. As a result, my messages have to wait several days at times before I receive them.) As I went through the usual assortment of messages from people telling me where to be and at what time, I was somewhat taken aback at a message from a friend from high school. She and I have been friends since that time, and we remain in close communication. The last few years have been hard for her as she has struggled through painful marriage difficulties, challenging career moves, and a variety of other things. While she is Christian (raised a Lutheran), I would not describe her as church-going. Nevertheless, as is the case with a great many people, she occasionally experiences a moment of clarity wherein she realizes an irresistible urge to go to Church. It does not strike me as odd that when she does experience this urge, she attends Catholic Mass. Such was the case this weekend.

After Mass, she called and left me a message, telling me that she had been profoundly moved by the reading of Matthew's account of the Passion. Over and over she repeated how overwhelmed she was at mankind's continual betrayal of Christ. That Christ died alone after suffering the humility of the scouring, that his countrymen had chosen a murderer instead of him, that his closest friends had abandoned him, that one had outrightly denied him struck a deep chord with her. Near the end of her message she commented, "No one should be allowed to attend Mass on Easter Sunday unless they have been to Mass on Palm Sunday first."

Such an opinion, of course, is the ideal that God has in mind. We attend Mass every Sunday, and so none of us, presumably, would have missed Palm Sunday. While it is true that Churches will be much more crowded in a week, we still do not escape the fact that the Resurrection follows the Crucifixion. It seems to me that, at some level anyway, this is what Holy Week is about. The intensity of Holy Week is unparalleled throughout the rest of the liturgical year. We gather first to commemorate the Last Supper, the institution of the Eucharist and the Priesthood wherein Jesus speaks the words that he will fulfill less than one day later. We gather with him in the Garden, keeping vigil. We accompany him through his trial, and venerate the instrument of his torture as the tool of our salvation. Then we wait through the night for his resurrection and we ask those who seek it to share both his death and new life in the waters of baptism. This moment makes little sense without reference to the day preceding it.

Indeed, one should not attend Mass on Easter Sunday without first having experienced the Passion.