Liturgical Joy

The liturgies of Holy Week and the Great Three Days of Easter are the most significant for the church, and the most joyful for this parish priest.

My first couple of years in the priesthood they were just confusing.  Too much, too confusing, too different from what I knew.  But two things, or three, changed my perspective.  The first was the RCIA -- the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults.  My third year as a priest I started an RCIA class at St. Therese, Munhall.  We had studied the RCIA in seminary, using a provisional salmon-colored paperback text issued by the bishops's conference.  So the basics of the RCIA were familiar to me.  I had visited then-Father Tom Tobin's RCIA class at St. Sebastian, Ross, the previous winter.  To the best of my knowledge, his RCIA was the first in the Diocese of Pittsburgh.  With his encouragement, I came to realize I could have such a class too.  So the fall-winter-spring of 1981-82 found me offering group instructions to four candidates (no catecumens, that is, unbaptized persons).  This was before the Catechism of the Catholic Church, or other such catechetical material.  I put together my own syllabus, got a friendly couple in the parish to be my "hospitality ministry" helpers, and away we went. 

As we approached Lent, and the three scrutinies, the excitement of these folks receiving the sacraments of Confirmation and Eucharist built.  The pastor, Father Joe Newell, actually let me lead the Easter Vigil that year, and I was privileged to receive them into the church, administer the sacrament of Confirmation, and give them their First Holy Communion.  I was truly on cloud nine after the ceremony.

Over the summer I papered the bulletin with invitations to welcome potential new Catholics.  A neighboring pastor asked me if I would take three of his candidates.  So I had eleven in the class.  Again, the liturgies of Holy Week and the Vigil came alive with these catechumens (elect) and candidates.  Through my pastor's classmate, Auxiliary Bishop John McDowell, we actually had a bishop do the rite of Election on the first Sunday of Lent.  Knowing I was to move to another parish in the fall, I talked the sister who was the director of religious education to take over the RCIA.  She did a very good job, and to the best of my knowledge thirty years later the RCIA is a routine part of St. Therese's parish ministry.

The second thing which made the liturgies come alive was reading The Three Days, by Gabe Huck.  Put out by Liturgical Training Publications of the Archdiocese of Chicago, this wonderful text was a combination of how to, liturgical history, and spiritual reflection.  For the first time, I saw the connection of the 93 days--40 days of Lent to prepare for the Great Three Days (Triduum) of Easter to rejoice during the 50 days of Easter.   Huck's style combined the hardheaded practicality of a pastor with the soaring rhetoric of a 4th century Church Father.  He also linked the core value of evangelization for the church with its liturgical celebrations.  Huck has since revised the book a couple of times.  It's still worth reading, for savoring the power of these liturgies.

Finally time itself was helpful.  Since the church only does the liturgies of Holy Week once a year, you have to make them count.  Over the years I have learned to do as the authorized liturgical books say.  For example, on Palm Sunday I will go outside the church to begin each Eucharist.  The pseudo-reenactment of a crowd, a pilgrim people, walking into the church helps immensely to show the specialness of the day.  Washing the feet of representative parishioners on Holy Thursday links me to every text of Catholic Social Thought, and the parish's efforts to reach out to the poor.  The beginning of the Celebration of the Lord's Passion on Good Friday, with the presider prostrating himself on the floor, is unique in the church, and humbling too (all those people looking at my rump under my vestments--what do they think?).  Each year I try to have an actual fire outside to begin the Great Easter Vigil with the Light of Christ in the midst of the darkness of night.  And time, and the repetition of the Passion Narratives of each of the four evangelists, help to show the differences in each story, and their particular slant on the suffering and death of Christ.

Along the way as I have served in different parishes and chapels, I have learned to adapt.  I try not to be a "liturgical terrorist," with absolute demands.  Sometimes you can't do everything you want. Listening to catechetical leaders, and reflecting on the life of the parish, I still don't think that we have in a very real way captured the power of the Easter Season, and the mystigogia of the RCIA.  First Confirmations and spring Confirmations (during Lent--ugh!) don't connect with the RCIA.   But falling short of an unattainable liturgical perfection does not prevent me from experiencing sheer liturgical joy, as we celebrate the most sacred mysteries of the Christian faith.