1 post tagged “holy week”

March has been a slow month for my Vox.  I haven't had much to say, and I still don't.  But I have an article to share.  It deals with the post-Christian element of our culture, and it makes me somewhat sad.  Essentially, it made me question just how I've been treating this most holy of weeks.  Do I act as a Christian should?  Not always.  I don't pray as much as I should, for one.  I go to Mass every week, without fail, but I feel uninspired at times. 
I'm planning a trip to Philadelphia to visit a community of friars.  I enjoy the experience of regimented religious life.  I come away from my visits to their community with a better understanding of my place in the world and how I should pursue my Faith.  But I live in the world while striving not to be "of" the world.  Is this possible?  Absolutely.  But it requires discipline that I sometimes fear I lack. 
What troubles me most about this article is the sad truth of it.  We live in a society that didn't even realize St. Patrick's Day fell during Holy Week, and so was actually moved.  People who would otherwise choose to oppose Christianity's ideological enemies would not necessarily embrace Christian life, especially if it should mean giving up Green Beer Night.  It's a phenomenon of cultural Christianity -- identifying oneself as Christian in the same way an American might call himself Irish despite a gulf of generations between him and Éire. 
My family went to Disney World when I was sixteen.  Stayed there for three or four days and went all over the park.  On our first day there, I think we were in Epcot.  Being sixteen, I decided I didn't want to hang out with my family all day.  We separated, and you must remember that this was in the days before cell phones were commonplace.  So I am alone until the park closes, wandering through a world of wonders and enchantment.  Distractions galore, all prefabricated and striving for authenticity.  An uncritical eye is pleased with the superficial effect, as I was. 
But then came night, and the inevitable closing time which none can escape.  And I found myself still alone, with not an idea where my family might be.  I thought that perhaps we had agreed to meet at a certain point, but there was an obstacle between me and it. 
Anyone who has been to Disney World at closing time might know that after the fireworks there is an orderly stampede towards the gates.  Thousands of people moving in one direction, shoulder to shoulder.  All nations, all races, all moving in one direction.  Well, imagine a sixteen year old me, moving opposite.  Surely, I reasoned, my family would be in this throng.  And surely I would see them.  So I made my way through the middle of the crowd, scanning for them and trying to remain visible.  I made my way across a bridge, where things became very tight.  Whole families locked arms, presenting a wall which impeded my progress tremendously.  It took me 20 minutes to cross. 
Have you ever gone against a crowd?  It is not pleasant.  I received literally hundreds of dirty looks, and several women loudly asked their husbands, "What is wrong with him?" while looking directly at me.   Still, I had no choice but to continue seeking my family.  And so I braved the crush of people, weaving as best I could but sometimes running into people headlong.
Then all at once I saw them.  The whole bunch of my family, blessedly standing still at the agreed upon spot.  Stressed and tired from the unpleasant experience of fighting thousands of people, I joined them and we made our way to the exit and back to the hotel, where I was allowed to order room service.
Sometimes the Faith feels like that for me.  Here's the article:

Easter, Anyone?
A cultural soul diminished.

By Charlotte Allen

For many years on Good Friday I would drive across town to a late-afternoon religious service at the house of a Catholic religious order in my city, Washington, D.C. Then, as dusk fell after the two-hour liturgy, I would drive back across town to my home. Each time I would be shocked to realize that I was a member of a dwindling minority of people who regarded Good Friday as different from the other 51 Fridays in the year.

Different neighborhoods on my route home provided little variance in this trend; whether the genteel and expensive post-Christian enclave in Northwest Washington where I lived, or the mostly African American and presumably fervently biblical ward in which the religious order that hosted my Good Friday liturgy resided, the general atmosphere remained consistent. A line of blue-jeaned college students snaked outside the door of my neighborhood pickup bar, the Cactus Cantina, as it did every other Friday night. Cars cruised and horns honked, and clusters of young people on the prowl for weekend adventure crammed the sidewalks.

The working-class Latino neighborhood through which I drove, whose residents nominally shared my Catholic faith and for whom Viernes Santo is a solemn fast day commemorating Christ’s death, was unseasonably merry: roaring crowds on the sidewalks, glittering lights from the bars, beer bottles smashing periodically against the asphalt.

Each passing scene on my tour confirmed the cultural obliteration of Easter — that most sacred of Christian feasts — in a society whose members still define themselves overwhelmingly as Christians. The “war against Christmas” — the campaign to force everyone to say, “Happy Holiday!” and banish the crèche from public places — is still ongoing and met with considerable resistance, à la Mike Huckabee and his in-your-face December campaign ad reminding viewers that Dec. 25 celebrates the day Jesus was born. The war against Easter, by contrast, seems sadly over.

My latest issue of Fine Cooking magazine arrived the other day, featuring what would have been known in former times as an Easter dinner: roast lamb, asparagus soup, angel food cake. Here, it’s identified as a “spring” dinner, and the issue otherwise contains not a hint that some of its readers might wish to mark the spring by celebrating Jesus’ triumph over death. Not even a recipe for dyed eggs or baby chick-shaped cookies graces the pages of the magazine.

More ominously still, St. Patrick’s Day falls this year during Holy Week for the first time since 1940. The usual green-beer binges did not abate in honor of the solemnity of this week. The saint himself, famous for having brought the bonfires of the Easter Vigil to Ireland, may well turn over in his grave.

Millions of American Christians will nonetheless celebrate Easter this year with church and sunrise services, and family lunches and brunches. But these commemorations are nowadays generally private and muted. Most schools and workplaces drone on in routine without even acknowledging the holiday (except in Hawaii, whose Good Friday legal holiday somehow survived a constitutional challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union). The “Easter parades” of yore in which people strolled in their finery after church are much diminished, if they continue to exist at all. Even the famous White House Egg Roll on Easter Monday has turned at least in part into a political occasion for gay and lesbian parents.

Given the solemn nature of Easter, which celebrates not the happy birth of a child as does Christmas, but the awesome themes of suffering, death, atonement, and resurrection, it is always conceptually difficult to festoon the paschal season with the rounds of merrymaking that characterize the end of December.

Still, it is sad and disconcerting that the oldest and holiest of Christian festivals is simply ignored by the media (and almost everyone else), and that Christians have acquiesced to the near-disappearance of their highest feast day from public consciousness.

Though we may — like the soldiers who boozed and gambled at the foot of the cross as salvation unfolded before them — ignore the phenomenon of redemption, Easter is above all a feast of hope. And as Augustine of Hippo wrote, “We are an Easter people.”

— Charlotte Allen is author of The Human Christ: The Search for the Historical Jesus.