Interrupted Routines - Lent Journal (Passion Sunday)

It was an otherwise ordinary day in 1st century Jerusalem, with villagers from the surrounding countryside entering the city to prepare for the upcoming Passover sacrifice. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims visited the religious center of Judaism in the course of a week, as they had done daily for a thousand years (minus the Babylonian exile, that is).

It was the same ceremony year in and year out, commemorating an event none of the faithful had lived through: the institution of the Passover, the Exodus from Egypt, the freeing from slavery. Families had their standard visits to purchase their lamb, bread, and bitter herbs; visiting the temple; offering the lamb to the priest; and, of course, the Passover meal. But a lifetime of running through the same events can easily lose its deeper religious significance. Beyond the reminders on the Passover evening from the father of the family, the event could have become routine; ordinary; a non-event.

When a preacher from Galilee entered town riding an ass, everyone woke up; who was that? they wondered, as they rushed over to see who was generating all the excitement. Heard all through the city were the sounds of Hossana to the Son of David, effectively declaring this man King. He swept into the city, interrupting all the typical festivities of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. He entered the courtyard of the temple preaching and calling for repentance, scattering money-changers and booths, and flipping more than just tables.

By the time the Passover came about, nobody was walking through the motions. That same preacher would be arrested and condemned to death for blasphemy on the holiest of all nights, and I suspect the news spread through the city and interrupted the plans of every single faithful Jew.

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Today was such an unusual way to celebrate Palm Sunday. We did a small procession of palms around the cul-de-sac before going in and having Mass. We made palm crosses and generally enjoyed ourselves. But it simply isn't the same.

I guess the thing I'm wondering about the most tonight is what we're going to do with this situation. We've been broken out of the ordinary and the mundane (even the ordinary and mundane that only come once a year). The typical ways we celebrate Holy Week have been scattered like so many disciples after the Last Supper, and those of us who still celebrate Holy Week are forced to get creative.

Whenever you know what to expect year after year - especially in any type of ceremony - it can be so easy to go through the motions. This is the way it's always been done, we say, and we don't think about the deeper significance. We lose our sense of wonder for the fact that there is a ceremony at all.

We take it for granted that on Palm Sunday (Passion Sunday) we will get our palms blessed; hear the Gospel account of Jesus's entry into Jerusalem; process into church singing All Glory, Laud, and Honor. Even the shouts of Let him be crucified! become just another expected part of the liturgy, and we miss some of the meaning that should hit us in it all.

Speaking for myself, I love Holy Week. I love all the liturgy, all the details and events throughout the Triduum. I'm going to be missing them, and it's not going to be the same. But it occurs to me that this interruption might be an opportunity.

We can almost make an idol out of the liturgy of Holy Week (I say all this as a lover of the liturgy), treating it like a retired band that still performs all the old hits at gigs. Play "Washing of the feet", we say. Or we wonder at how Father didn't give us enough time to venerate the Cross on Good Friday. Or we get upset because there were too many readings at the Easter Vigil. Or too few readings.

Liturgy and ceremony are important. But only because they point to something that is significant and meaningful. For some of us, in wanting the perfect Holy Week we made it all about the aesthetics and the choreography. For others, we just wanted to skip past all the fluff and get straight to Easter. Regardless, we forgot the real message of the Gospel in God's love for us through Jesus's passion, death, and resurrection.

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As I said - what I'm wondering about tonight is how these circumstances will wake us up. Will we look at the liturgy in a whole new light? Will we be able to successfully look past the liturgy to the person of Jesus, putting a new perspective on this Week? Will we find new ways of getting back to the Paschal mystery that is at the heart of the liturgy? Will we come to see Jesus's sacrifice through fresh eyes?