It is Holy Week as I write this column. Today is Holy Friday in the Orthodox tradition, and I have come to my favorite coffee shop from the service of Royal Hours where we chant all four gospel accounts of the Crucifixion. Last night was Holy Thursday, a solemn service spent mostly on our knees in the dark as we remember Christ’s betrayal. The hymns are vivid (“The Lamb Whom Isaiah proclaimed goes of His own will to the slaughter. He gives His back to scourging, and His cheeks to blows, and turns not away His face from the shame of their spitting…”). I imagine Christ in Gethsemane sweating drops of blood as he awaits his betrayer. ("Judas gave a kiss and handed over Christ; and the Lord went as a sheep to the slaughter, for He alone is compassionate and loves mankind.”) This year it overwhelms me not only that Christ died, but that he suffered so viscerally, so hideously. I am ashamed that even on Holy Thursday I coddle my aching back and weary feet; I sink into a sitting position instead of the upright kneel of the surrounding worshippers. Even now I do not wait in Gethsemane with Him for even an hour. (“Deliver our souls, O Lord…for Thou alone art boundless in long-suffering…”).
But Holy Week leads to something better. Easter is coming. Just before midnight on Holy Saturday night we will gather for Paschal Nocturnes. The church will be utterly dark as we kneel in prayer, and then at midnight the priests and deacons and altar boys, bearing lit candles, will lead us out of the darkness and march with us three times around the temple for the three days of Christ’s burial. Then our priest will beat on the locked doors of the church, and when they open the church will be ablaze with lights, the golden chandelier will be swinging in the aftershocks of the rolled stone, and the choir will be singing over and over again the paschal refrain: “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!”
The feast begins! After anguish and longing, duty gives way to desire, and the Bright Sadness of Holy Week becomes the mystical joy of Easter.
At Gethsemane and Golgotha, Christ demonstrated how to suffer. At some point it is given to us to imitate Christ in his sufferings. This is not only a spiritual and psychological reality, but a literary one. Throughout the ages, tales speak of suffering heroes, reminding us that duty requires endurance. One such story is the Aeneid by the Roman poet Virgil, in which Aeneas agonizes as he fulfills his appointed duty. But Aeneas’ pain differs from Christ’s because it remains duty divorced from desire. This contrast strikes me more than ever on Holy Week.
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