Fred Sneesby - Observations on Culture, Faith and Politics

Holy Week Memories

March 31, 2007

Are they playing baseball next Friday? Opening Day for Major League Baseball is this coming Monday. Will they pause at the beginning of the season for Good Friday? Wait, I’ll switch to the Internet and check out Major League Baseball’s schedule …

Oh dear. There is a schedule of baseball games on Good Friday. Wow. Even the Stock Market closes on Good Friday. My own team, the Boston Red Sox, will play the Texas Rangers that day. Worse still, the game starts at 2:05 PM. I certainly will not be tuning in. Drilled into me from toddler days was the sacredness of Good Friday, particularly the hours between 12 Noon and 3 PM. My reaction to any sort of everyday activity during those hours is visceral, akin to the reaction people over 45 have when someone drops the American flag on the ground.

When we were seven children growing up in the 1950’s and ‘60’s, we Sneesbys were, of course, out of school for the day. At 12 Noon, we were expected to come into the house and sit quietly praying, reading the Bible or some religious book, or reciting the Rosary. Usually, we did all of the above to pass the three hours. It was very solemn. Even now, with our own children, we have customs to observe the day and those blessed hours properly.

I have many recollections of the dozens of Holy Weeks that are within the reach of my memory. One Holy Thursday, I was the main celebrant of the Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord’s Supper. In the places I had been, usually the senior priest did that so this was my first time in such a role even though I had been a priest for several years. The Washing of Feet, recalling Jesus’ washing of the disciples’ feet at the Last Supper, is an integral part of the Holy Thursday service and it was, indeed, very moving for me. It is normally a ritual that is fairly well orchestrated; parishioners are chosen to come forward and they are carefully instructed on what to do so that it all can go smoothly. On that evening, the selected people came forward and I washed their feet. After the last one, I stood up to get on with the Mass but when I turned around, there were two or three older folks standing in line ready for me to wash their feet, too. Ritual blended in to reality as I knelt down once again to do their bidding.

In that same parish, I was leading a Good Friday service in Spanish. As Catholics would know, Good Friday is the only day of the year when Mass is not celebrated. Instead, there is a service which does include reception of Communion that features the reading of the Passion and the veneration of the Cross. It is my favorite Holy Week service. In the couple of weeks before that particular Good Friday, a young man, an immigrant from Bolivia, had been interrupted by the police in a drug deal; a car chase ensued and this eighteen year old rammed the car of an unsuspecting person who was pulling out of a grocery store parking lot. That person was killed and now, on that Good Friday, the young man was in jail. As I was processing down the middle aisle raising the cross over my head and chanting, “Behold the wood of the Cross on which hung the Savior of the world,” the whole family of that young man came right up to me and began pleading for help for their boy. In my simple Spanish I had to ask them to wait until the end of the service, but what raw suffering there was on that Good Friday and what a naked search for salvation at the foot of the Cross!

The last Holy Saturday I celebrated as an active priest, I went at ten o’clock at night to a church that has since been torn down. At the time, it was the church with the largest seating capacity in the whole state of Rhode Island, once filled with Irish immigrants and their descendants. Now, Spanish-speaking immigrants were beginning to come and I was there to celebrate the Easter Vigil with them. I have been to many glorious Easter Vigils in my lifetime. If you are not Catholic, you should go to one because the texts and the prayers, the rituals and the symbols are so rich. Part of the ceremony is the lighting of the New Fire and, from that fire, the lighting of a large candle that symbolizes the Risen Jesus. Later, the whole goal of the Lenten season is reached when the congregation renews their vows of baptism. It is very ancient and it is very powerful.

On that night, about thirty people came. It was chilly, even inside the large church, and the people moved in close around the small fire. As I recited the prayers, I could look around and see everyone’s face lit up by the glow from the flames. I felt a closeness to them. I felt that the faces reflected in that light were the faces of my brothers and sisters and I could see that my vows of baptism that I would renew that night were not only a pledge to the God out there and to the universal Church but were also a pledge to these people whose faces I could see by the light of the New Fire, a promise that I would be Christ for them and, in turn, they, as they renewed their vows, were promising to be Christ for me.

It was a sense of Church that was stark and very scary; I saw, for a moment, what being baptized into a Church might mean, what entering into the Death and Resurrection of Jesus as a community might entail, this pledge of a life of self-sacrifice for people with whom I had no blood or social bond.

I’m not sure that this dedication to the others is a characteristic of our parish communities. I know that I have not even attempted such a life beyond my family and some small circles of people I have known through the years. It is a great Easter challenge for us who would be religious and church-going people: that the renewal of our vows might mean a real and concrete commitment of love to the others who are gathered around the fire.

I hope that everyone has a grace-filled Holy Week and that we all let reality intrude on our rituals to make them reach us at a deeper place.