Catholic Guide to the Triduum

Thanks to Jonathan Teixeira and Melissa Keating at The Focus Blog for putting this together.
http://focus.org/blog

To Have and to Hold

It was a beautiful Saturday in June. The Church was full. A man and woman stood in front of them all and exchanged their vows. The priest announced them, man and wife. When the pictures were taken the man walked out of the Church, got into a car with his girlfriend, and the two sped off to dinner together.

All of us would look upon that man with distain. How could he treat his marriage vows so flippantly? Did they actually mean anything to him? Few of us realize how much of that man is in so many of us.

One facet of a Sacrament is it is an oath to the death. In marriage, the couple exchange vows promising to be faithful to each other until the natural death of one of the two. What these vows do is to define their relationship. A Sacrament is a covenant. A covenant is an agreement where you give your full self in return of another’s full self until death of one of the two parties. This is why there is no such thing as a Catholic divorce. A contract is an exchange of goods or services for an agreed upon period of time. Far too many marriages these days are contractual instead of covenantal.

Every Sacrament has this aspect to it. In the Sacrament of Confirmation a person stands before the entire Church and makes a declaration of faith. You make vows to God that you will the live the faith faithfully. Does this sound like a marriage? Well, that is pretty much what it is. In the Sacrament you define the terms of the covenant. You are my God and I am your son or daughter. When we receive the Sacrament of Confirmation we agree to certain duties and responsibilities which include things like attending Mass every Sunday and other holy days of obligation, making a confession at least once a year, abstaining from meat on Fridays or offering another penance on Fridays outside of Lent, and following a proper fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Many who receive this Sacrament never darken the doorstep of a Church again until they want either the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony or a funeral. Others do attend Mass on occasion but put as much work into this marriage as they would if they were attending a time share meeting in Florida.

The Sacrament of the Most Holy Eucharist isn’t about receiving communion. Yes, we do receive the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ when we present ourselves at communion but this Sacrament is also a covenant. It too is an oath to the death that comes with duties and responsibilities. In it we receive our Lord but we also give ourselves to him. When we receive the Eucharist we are taking a vow to live for Jesus and die for him if necessary. How do you show Jesus you love him? It is not by doing good works or by being nice to people. You show your love for him by obeying his commands. Jesus passed his teachings on to his disciples, who passed them on to their replacements. This continued through the centuries until the teachings were handed down to the bishops who currently serve the Church today.

We live at a time when rebellion to authority is common place. There are many who receive the Eucharist who can’t wait until they get to the Narthex to tell you the ways the Catholic Church is wrong and needs to change. If Church teachings are handed down from Jesus then they aren’t disagreeing with the Church, they are disagreeing with Jesus. If you love me you will follow my commands. Sorry Jesus, you are out of date and need to change these commands to be compatible with our times.

So we look with disdain on the man who leaves his new wife at the reception and goes off with his girlfriend to dinner. We concentrate more on the splinter in his eye over the plank in ours. When you don’t see a Sacrament for what it truly is it is easy to overlook our own vows. When you start treating the Sacraments as the oaths to the death they really are you begin to see the beauty each covenant brings and draw ever nearer to Jesus.

Kumbaya

I once worked with a man who often confused words and their meanings. One night he told us a story about a man in Minnesota who lost both of his arms at the elbows in a concubine. Imagine the look of horror on our faces, and not for the reason he thought it was there.  Finally, someone asked him if he knew what a concubine was. He said yes, it was that green tractor that harvests corn.

Um, no Wade…

The truth of the matter is that words do have meanings despite how we choose to use them. You would never hear a doctor say that he was going to perform an appendectomy if he were going to remove your tonsils. You would never ask a mechanic to fix your drive shaft if your car wasn’t stopping properly.

Take the word communion as an example. From a general religious understanding it is a communal meal shared with all present. Most Christian faiths celebrate some sort of communion where all are invited to partake in the community meal representing the Last Supper. Catholics in particular are often criticized for only allowing only Catholics in a state of Grace to present themselves for communion. How is this considered communion if the entire community present is not invited to partake?

If we break the word down into its parts we get “com – union”. The deeper sense of the word means “with – union” or “in union with”. Receiving Catholic communion isn’t simply the getting the bread and wine that represents the Last Supper. Catholic communion is a Sacrament, which, when traced to its original is “an oath to the death”. When one presents himself for communion how is he taking an oath to the death?

When I present myself for communion (actually the reception of the Holy Eucharist) I am making a public statement, and renewing my oath to the death, that I am in union with the Catholic Church and all of her teachings, that I will live my life for Jesus and die for him if necessary. If I do not live up to this oath I forfeit that which I gave as collateral for this Sacrament, namely my eternal life. It would be intellectually dishonest for someone who doesn’t hold the Catholic faith to present themself to receive the Eucharist and take this oath. They are not in union with the Roman Catholic Church.

Likewise, Catholics are barred from receiving communion from another faith tradition for the exact same reason. That faith community may very well view it as nothing more than a communal meal all are invited to share but to a Catholic it is a public affirmation of being in union with that faith. We are not in union with that faith so we must not partake in that communion.

Unfortunately we live in an age where more and more Catholics stand at Mass and utter the creed, “I believe in one God…” but then only make it as far as the Narthex before they are willing to say, “But the Church is wrong on (insert any number of issues)”. There is no shortage of Catholics who say that the Church needs to change Her teachings to get with the times. You cannot possibly be in union with the Church when you believe that the Church is wrong. If you are not in union with the Church you cannot honestly take an oath to the death stating that you are.

We are required by our faith to believe and accept all of the Church’s teaching on faith and morals even if we do not understand them. When you disagree with a Church teaching you disagree with Christ directly. To say that the Church is wrong in the matters of faith and morals is to say that Jesus is wrong. To say that Jesus is wrong is to cease to be Catholic.

The Triple Lindy

Thornton Melon was a first generation son of an Italian tailor. He did poorly in school and went into his father’s line of work. Through hard work he became a giant in the corporate business world. When his son tells him that he is going to drop out of college because he was not doing well Thornton enrolls as a freshman to go through the process with his son.

One of the first classes Thornton has is in business administration where he immediately butts heads with the Dean of the business school. Dr. Barbay teaches text book business administration that no longer coincides with the reality of how business is actually run. The students pay more attention to Thornton than to the professor. The movie, of course, is Rodney Dangerfield’s 1986 comedy Back to School.

You cannot teach something to someone that you are not immersed in yourself. Reading a cook book does not make one a gourmet chef any more than owning a piano makes one a pianist. Real teachers live in the subject they teach.

Many main stream non-Catholic faith traditions hold fast to the sola scriptura belief, the belief that only the things in the bible are important. But Jesus didn’t write a book. In fact, the only time that the bible says Jesus wrote anything it was in the dirt and never seen by anyone but him. Life as a Christian probably would be so much easier if he had written down exactly what his teachings were in a way we wouldn’t argue over them. But Jesus knew that you couldn’t teach what you are not immersed in.

So Jesus didn’t write a book. Jesus lived with the Twelve. They traveled everywhere together. Jesus did the majority of his teaching, not in the temple, not in a synagogue, and not on a mountain top. Jesus did the majority of his teaching on the road as he and the Twelve walked from place to place. The Twelve were immersed at every moment with the teaching of the Master.

After Jesus ascended to heaven the Twelve did likewise and immersed their disciples into the teachings they had received. They didn’t sit down and write the New Testament. They saw no need to record, in written form, their way of life. They lived the New Testament and they brought converts to the faith by the example of their lives.

History is often lost to the sands of time if it is not recorded for posterity. Only after they realized that Jesus probably wasn’t going to come again in their lifetimes and seeing their end in sight did they start to write down their witness. But that did not change greatly how the faith was passed on. It was still passed on by immersion. For almost 1500 years the faith was handed down, not in book form, but by Sacred Tradition. The Church lived their faith. It wasn’t until the invention of the printing press in c.1440 that the concept of the bible in book form, available to the masses, was even possible.

Then in 1517, a Catholic monk revolting from the Church, threw out Sacred Tradition, and introduced the world to the concept of sola scriptura –scripture alone. This allowed him to translate the newly printed bible in a way that proof texted his opinions over the teachings that have been handed down for a millennium and a half. Even in his own lifetime scholars of Luther used his own argument of sola scriptura against him by arguing that he was also wrong and that their opinion was correct. This has spawned the nearly 40,000 different denominations of Christian faith that all teach something different as the whole truth.

The Catholic Church, both Eastern and Western, still maintain their immersion in both Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, passed down to the faithful through the authoritative teaching office of the Church known as the Magisterium.

This is the “Triple Lindy” of our faith, Scripture – Tradition – Apostolic Succession.

I am Negan

In the last two seasons of the Walking Dead we have seen the survivors at Alexandria, the Kingdom, and Hilltop trying to break free from Negan and the Saviors. After a virus wipes out civilization Negan formed a group called the Saviors to restore order to a chaotic world. He requires total obedience to him and forces the communities he conquers to provide him with the majority of the food they raise and the goods they scavenge. He forces compliance through great brutality that he sees is as tragic but lovingly necessary.

We live during a time when the culture believes that real freedom is having the ability to do anything you want any time you wish to do it. Murdering a developing baby in the womb is a choice. The culture demands that we all accept a different definition of marriage and now goes as far as to tell us a person has a right to choose for themselves what biological gender they wish to be. This isn’t true freedom. It is slavery to our passions. It is slavery just as much as the survivors on the Walking Dead are slaves to Negan.

Take smoking as an example. No one takes up smoking because it is the right thing to do. People take up smoking because it gives them pleasure. They get a high when they breathe in that nicotine rich smoke. But soon they become a slave to that pleasure. They become addicted, a slave to smoking. Eventually the cigarette dictates when they must go and have a smoke, when they must leave a party, a family event, their job. Those bound by the heaviest chains find it even difficult to travel if they can’t get their fix at the required intervals. This is slavery to a passion.

We as Catholics fast during Lent to strengthen our will power. The only real freedom any of us have is the ability to say no. Yes, sin is pleasurable. It can be as addicting as smoking. Having the ability to say no to that pleasure is liberating. Come, enjoy the freedom of having sex with someone desirable and cheat on your wife. NO! Come, enjoy the freedom of cheating your neighbor out of his goods. NO! Come and abort the baby growing within you so you can continue the freedom of a care free life. NO!

No is the only real freedom we have. The “Thou shall nots” in the Ten Commandments do not restrict freedoms. They make one more free. “Thou shall not commit adultery” does not take away your freedom from having sex with anyone you find desirable. It liberates you to be able to fully love your spouse and not be a slave to animalist desire. Let a river run free and many times it will be anorexic, shallow, and lacking. Restrict its flow and the river will team with life. God gives us restrictions so that we can have life and have it more abundantly.

Fasting is an exercise that increases our ability to say No. The more we fast the easier it is for us to liberate ourselves from the chains of slavery to self pleasure and sin. This liberation is never easy. Just ask a two pack a day smoker or the survivors in the Walking Dead. The more we can say no to ourselves the easier it becomes. The craving for a cigarette may never go away but the ability to get past the craving without falling slave to it becomes easier the more we do it. No should be one of the most important words we have at our disposal. Practice using it more.