Desolation… I think that’s the word for what I’m feeling. I expected this week to be spiritually intense, but I don’t think I realized it would be quite so… grueling. Liturgy, as “actions of the people,” takes on a deeper significance during Holy Week. I’m truly participating, and that’s very new for me. Sure, there was the idea that “we crucified Jesus” in the Christianity of my upbringing, but that was abstract and framed as part of the self-flagellation of the Passion narrative in the evangelical church.
This week, I have been invited to participate, not so much in the ground of angry Jews, as in the heartbroken group of disciples. Hence the desolation. Experiencing the Passion from this vantage point is the central theme of all the Holy Week liturgies. Tenebrae on Wednesday was a sort of overture, prefiguring the darkness that first Christian community felt and the subsequent rush when light returned. Maundy Thursday and the overnight vigil brought the Upper Room and Gethsemane to life (in Minnesota, of all places). There was a bittersweet taste as we watched the altar stripped and the Christ (embodied in the Sacrament) bound and led away. We stayed awake and waited with Christ for as long as we could, but ultimately, we slept just as the disciples did.
Friday’s Mass brought this general sense of dread to a piercing conclusion as we relived Christ’s death and ate the last of his Body and Blood left in the church. The despair of those watching helpless at the foot of the cross rushed over me. The phenomenal manifestations of Immanuel had been ripped away. A profound loneliness, made no less isolating by the presence of others in the nave, set in… How do we proceed when the beacon of our hope has been removed from us? How do we steer this ship without a lodestar? What the hell am I supposed to do now?
I’m still sitting in this. I know Holy Saturday is a day of preparation for the Vigil at sunset tonight. But I’m left at a loss for how to prepare. There’s a profound sense of loss lying over me like a leaden blanket. My movements and thinking feel slow, like trying to walk through thick mud. The sun is shining, but things feel dark. I know this is temporary—the Paschal fire will be lit tonight and we will proclaim Christ Risen, breaking out the Alleluias we’ve sequestered for so many weeks. But this knowledge that the light is coming doesn’t seem to pierce through this weight.
Maybe that’s what the Day of Preparation is about for me (this year, at least). Sitting with the loss and the isolation and fear. This was, after all, the emotional stage onto which the Resurrected Christ sprang. My reserves of pious energy have been depleted, and right now I just need assurance that God is with me. I know that’s coming tonight, and I can’t wait. But maybe I have to… just a little longer.