Remarks on Holy Week during COVID
4/6/20
Should we just say to hell with it?
Should we just throw in the towel?
And cancel Holy Week?
If sports are canceled, shouldn't Holy Week be? For Catholicism, if it is anything, is a full contact sports. It always is. It always will be.
Yet this is hard. If Catholicism is a full contact sport, who gets to play during this year of social distancing? Is everyone except a couple people in Church just playing a video game from home? Are we playing for keeps this year or just producing the latest reality TV show, that hides more than it shows?
I think these are legitimate questions. Obviously, if we have any faith whatsoever, we can't cancel Easter. We can't skip Holy Week. Yet I'm not sure we are nailing our response as a Church to COVID-19. If McDonalds can stay open and deliver food, I think there has to be a way for us to safely deliver sacraments even in the worst of pandemics. But this is above my pay grade. I trust and support the decisions that have been made. What isn't above my pay grade is my advice on how to still make Holy Week a full contact sport, as it always must be for us, even without us being physically together.
Let me emphasize again why this is so hard for the Catholic faith to be delivered this week. The Church understands that to be human is to be a unity of soul and body. To turn Holy Week into something virtual is to divorce soul and body. That can't be an option.
The Church teaches as well that grace builds upon nature. So we are saved according to the same pattern by which we are created. That is to say, we are saved not by the separation of soul from body, but by their full healing and integration. So Catholics have to profess more than anyone, COVID or no COVID, the central truth of Easter, the Resurrection of the Body, for the Catholic Church is physically part of the Body of Christ that rises. Our celebration of the Paschal Mystery can never be less sacramental, then, it must ALWAYS, this year included, but mediated in and through our bodies.
Furthermore, the sacraments are how we consummate (non-sexually of course) our marriage to God. They are the greatest treasures given by Christ to His bride, the Church. So again, it's the hardest thing imaginable - to go online this year. It seems to go against everything that makes us Catholic Christians - to have a virtual Holy Week. It could come across as fake to its very core. So why not just mail it in this year - and if Catholicism can never be anything but a full contact sport, to cancel like every sporting event is canceled, and wait for a better day?
It's because the mystical body of Christ includes a physical dimension that we can and must go forward this year into the celebration of Holy Week as a full contact sport. No, you will not be allowed in the Church this year. I'm sorry. But you will mysteriously be just as physically present as if you were.
It's because we are a sacramental Church that ironically we are together even when we are apart. When we go to confession, Christ shows up in the person of the priest. Even moreso at Mass, Christ shows up in the word, the priest, the bread and wine, and yes last but not least, in the ASSEMBLY. So if Christ is made mystically but physically present when you show up for Mass, so you are made mystically but no less physically present in Him when He shows up for Mass.
We know this to be true in our bones - that we are really and physically present to each other, even with those who we can no longer see because of death or distance, in the Eucharist. See you in the Eucharist.
So even though you won't be there on Easter Sunday, I promise you will be there.
St. Paul delivers this truth this way. If one part of the body suffers, then everyone suffers. If one part rejoices, all parts rejoice. The Church is made of individual members, but all mysteriously and no less physically present to each other. We are in this together. They mystery of faith and the grace of the sacraments are delivered physically to a bride that is also a communion of persons, a family and a Church.
When you are watching a priest receive the Eucharist on your laptop TV, you are there. You really are. The nourishment that enters the head is distributed to the whole body. While the expression and the actualization of the salvific and sacramental grace will be vastly different this year, it will be no less available. The grace of one Eucharist, which is enough to save the whole world and everyone in it, will reach the bodies of all her members who prepare to receive Jesus. All members will be physically present and invited to rise bodily with Christ this year. There is no such thing as a merely spiritual or virtual Easter.
Yes, it will be hard. But you will be in solidarity with vast numbers of Catholic Christians throughout the centuries who have had to rise bodily with Christ on Easter, and become saints, without being able physically and individually to go to Mass.
Yet it doesn't mean that Catholicism is not still a full contact sport. It doesn't mean that Holy Week is canceled. The grace of this Easter is as real and physical as ever. And the same holds true for this Easter as every Easter. If I do not rise physically and totally with Christ to the fullness and newness of life this Easter, can I honestly say that I ever will?
4/6/20
Should we just say to hell with it?
Should we just throw in the towel?
And cancel Holy Week?
If sports are canceled, shouldn't Holy Week be? For Catholicism, if it is anything, is a full contact sports. It always is. It always will be.
Yet this is hard. If Catholicism is a full contact sport, who gets to play during this year of social distancing? Is everyone except a couple people in Church just playing a video game from home? Are we playing for keeps this year or just producing the latest reality TV show, that hides more than it shows?
I think these are legitimate questions. Obviously, if we have any faith whatsoever, we can't cancel Easter. We can't skip Holy Week. Yet I'm not sure we are nailing our response as a Church to COVID-19. If McDonalds can stay open and deliver food, I think there has to be a way for us to safely deliver sacraments even in the worst of pandemics. But this is above my pay grade. I trust and support the decisions that have been made. What isn't above my pay grade is my advice on how to still make Holy Week a full contact sport, as it always must be for us, even without us being physically together.
Let me emphasize again why this is so hard for the Catholic faith to be delivered this week. The Church understands that to be human is to be a unity of soul and body. To turn Holy Week into something virtual is to divorce soul and body. That can't be an option.
The Church teaches as well that grace builds upon nature. So we are saved according to the same pattern by which we are created. That is to say, we are saved not by the separation of soul from body, but by their full healing and integration. So Catholics have to profess more than anyone, COVID or no COVID, the central truth of Easter, the Resurrection of the Body, for the Catholic Church is physically part of the Body of Christ that rises. Our celebration of the Paschal Mystery can never be less sacramental, then, it must ALWAYS, this year included, but mediated in and through our bodies.
Furthermore, the sacraments are how we consummate (non-sexually of course) our marriage to God. They are the greatest treasures given by Christ to His bride, the Church. So again, it's the hardest thing imaginable - to go online this year. It seems to go against everything that makes us Catholic Christians - to have a virtual Holy Week. It could come across as fake to its very core. So why not just mail it in this year - and if Catholicism can never be anything but a full contact sport, to cancel like every sporting event is canceled, and wait for a better day?
It's because the mystical body of Christ includes a physical dimension that we can and must go forward this year into the celebration of Holy Week as a full contact sport. No, you will not be allowed in the Church this year. I'm sorry. But you will mysteriously be just as physically present as if you were.
It's because we are a sacramental Church that ironically we are together even when we are apart. When we go to confession, Christ shows up in the person of the priest. Even moreso at Mass, Christ shows up in the word, the priest, the bread and wine, and yes last but not least, in the ASSEMBLY. So if Christ is made mystically but physically present when you show up for Mass, so you are made mystically but no less physically present in Him when He shows up for Mass.
We know this to be true in our bones - that we are really and physically present to each other, even with those who we can no longer see because of death or distance, in the Eucharist. See you in the Eucharist.
So even though you won't be there on Easter Sunday, I promise you will be there.
St. Paul delivers this truth this way. If one part of the body suffers, then everyone suffers. If one part rejoices, all parts rejoice. The Church is made of individual members, but all mysteriously and no less physically present to each other. We are in this together. They mystery of faith and the grace of the sacraments are delivered physically to a bride that is also a communion of persons, a family and a Church.
When you are watching a priest receive the Eucharist on your laptop TV, you are there. You really are. The nourishment that enters the head is distributed to the whole body. While the expression and the actualization of the salvific and sacramental grace will be vastly different this year, it will be no less available. The grace of one Eucharist, which is enough to save the whole world and everyone in it, will reach the bodies of all her members who prepare to receive Jesus. All members will be physically present and invited to rise bodily with Christ this year. There is no such thing as a merely spiritual or virtual Easter.
Yes, it will be hard. But you will be in solidarity with vast numbers of Catholic Christians throughout the centuries who have had to rise bodily with Christ on Easter, and become saints, without being able physically and individually to go to Mass.
Yet it doesn't mean that Catholicism is not still a full contact sport. It doesn't mean that Holy Week is canceled. The grace of this Easter is as real and physical as ever. And the same holds true for this Easter as every Easter. If I do not rise physically and totally with Christ to the fullness and newness of life this Easter, can I honestly say that I ever will?
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